Profile
Ben Barry (he/him) is a fashion educator, scholar-designer, and academic leader committed to social justice in fashion. As Dean and Joseph and Gail Gromek Professor in Fashion Business in the School of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, Ben has been named to The Vogue Business inaugural “100 Innovators” list for his contributions to the field. He holds an undergraduate degree in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto, an MPhil in Innovation, Strategy, and Organization, and a PhD in Management from the Judge Business School at Cambridge University.
Since his appointment as Dean in July 2021, Ben has championed the transformation of the fashion curriculum and culture at Parsons, institutionally prioritizing access, equity, sustainability, and justice. He worked with the community to lead out the creation of a renewed school vision and strategic direction. This initiative resulted in signiciant hiring to diversify faculty with over 55% of full-time fashion faculty now self-identifing as Native American, Black, South Asian, East Asian and Latinx, in addition to other underrepresented groups in fashion education, as well as the development of new courses in fat fashion, Indigenous fashion and multi-sensory design. In collaboration with Sinéad Burke, Ben co-founded and co-coordinates the Parsons Disabled Fashion Student Program. This initiative supports Disabled students through recruitment, scholarships, and mentorship, creating inclusive pathways in fashion education and the industry.
Ben’s research focuses on the production, consumption, management and representation of fashion, exploring the intersectional experiences of disabled, fat, trans, and queer individuals and using a blend of qualitative, quantitative, and creative methods. His scholarship also explores fashion education and the role of academic leadership as practice-based research. With over $1.5 million in funding from agencies including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Ford Foundation, his work has impacted both academia and industry. His publications in journals and media include Fashion Theory, International Journal of Advertising, Fat Studies, Gender & Society, Business of Fashion and Harvard Business Review. He has also co-edited anthologies including Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt and Transcend and Fashion Education: The Systemic Revolution.
Currently, Ben leads the Pathways for Disabled Designers: Towards Systemic Inclusion in Fashion research project in collaboration with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). This project explores disability inclusion in fashion design and develops programs to foster the recruitment, retention and advancement of disabled employees in the fashion industry. He is also writing a book titled Crip Fashion that is based on five years of research and engagement with Disabled people through wardrobe interviews and collaborative art and design projects.
Degrees Held
BA Women's and Gender Studies, University of Toronto
MPhil Innovation, Strategy and Organization, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
PhD Management, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge
Recent Publications
Barry, Ben, Nesbitt, Philippa and Megan Strickfaden (2024). Multi-sensory methods: Toward a crip methodology in fashion studies, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 11, 81-109 (special issue on B(l)ending Research Methods: Reimagining a Theoretical Turn in Fashion Scholarship).
Barry, Ben (2024). Disability dress wisdom and accessible fashion. In José Blanco (ed.), The Meanings of Dress (5th edition), 174-184. New York: Fairchild.
Barry, Ben and Philippa Nesbit (2023). Designing clothing for and from love. In Roberto Filippello and Ilya Parkins (eds.), Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress, 99-119, London: Palgrave (Fashion and Body Series).
Barry, Ben, Nesbitt, Philippa, De Villa, Alexis, McMullin, Kristina, and Jonathan Dumitra (2023). Re-making clothing, re-making worlds: On crip fashion hacking. Social Sciences, 12(19), 500 (special issue on Rethinking Artful Politics: Bodies of Difference Remaking Body Worlds).
Friedman, May, Evans, Calla and Ben Barry (2023). Intersectionality gets fashionably Fat: Arts-based approaches to gender, fat and fashion, Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 8(1), 173-204.
Barry, Ben and Alison Matthews David (2023). A fashion studies manifesto: Towards an (Inter)disciplinary field, Fashion Studies, 1(1), 1-22 (special issue on The State of the Field).
Barry, Ben and Deborah Christel (eds.) (2023). Fashion Education: The Systemic Revolution, Bristol: Intellect Books.
Barry, Ben and Philippa Nesbitt. (2022). Self-fashioning queer/crip: Stretching and grappling with disability, gender and dress, Fashion, Style and Popular Culture, 10(1), 45-62.
Clancy, Johnathan and Ben Barry. (2022). Undressing masculinity: How men fashion themselves through underwear, Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, 9(2), 163-186.
Barry, Ben, De Villa, Alexis, Nesbitt, Philippa, McMullin, Kristina and Megan Strickfaden. (2022). Crip masculinities and everyday dress: Intersectional narratives of imagination, access and ownership. In Vicki Karaminas, Adam Geczy and Pamela Church Gibson (eds.), Fashionable Masculinities: Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexual, 161-176, Rutgers University Press.
Barry, Ben (2021). How to transform fashion education—A manifesto for equity, inclusion and decolonization. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 8(1), 123-130.
Barry, Ben, Evans, Calla and May Friedman. (2021). Fattening fabulousness: The joys and risks of troubling gender through fat fashion. Fat Studies, online first.
Reilly, Andrew and Ben Barry (eds.). (2020). Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt and Transcend, Bristol: Intellect Books.
Barry, Ben and Daniel Drak. (2019). Intersectional interventions into queer and trans liberation: Youth resistance against right-wing populism through fashion hacking. Fashion Theory, 23(6), 679-709.
Barry, Ben (2019). Fabulous masculinities: Refashioning the fat and disabled male body. Fashion Theory, 23(2), 275-307.
Barry, Ben and Nathaniel Weiner. (2019). Suited for success: Suits, status and hybrid masculinity. Men and Masculinities, 22(2), 151–176.
Barry, Ben. (2018). (Re)fashioning masculinity: Social identity and context in men's hybrid masculinities through dress, Gender & Society, 34(4), 638–662.
Barry, Ben. (2017) Enclothed knowledge: The fashion show as an arts-informed research method. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 16(3), Art 2.
Barry, Ben and Dylan Martin. (2016). Fashionably fit: Young men’s dress decisions and body anxieties. Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 14(3), 3-22.
Barry, Ben and Barbara J. Phillips. (2016). Destabilizing the gaze towards male fashion models: Expanding men’s gender and sexuality identities. Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, 3(1), 17-35.
Barry, Ben and Barbara J. Phillips. (2016). The fashion engagement grid: Understanding men’s responses to fashion advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 35(3), 438-464.
Barry, Ben and Dylan Martin. (2016). Gender rebels: Inside the wardrobes of young gay men with subversive style. Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, 3(2), 225-250.