Faculty

Luciana Scrutchen, textile designer, scholar, and educator, is an Associate Professor of Fashion at Parsons School of Design, School of Fashion. Her previous leadership roles include Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at The New School University; Associate Dean of the School of Fashion; Director of the AAS Fashion Design program; Coordinator of School of Fashion Electives; and Coordinator of Printmaking in the School of Art, Media, and Technology. Across these appointments, she has led initiatives in curriculum development, faculty advancement, and strategic planning.

Professor Scrutchen’s teaching, research, and creative practice explore the intersections of textiles, technology, cultural knowledge systems, and fashion futures. Her scholarship centers the voices, experiences, and aesthetic practices of Black women across lines of gender identity, complexion, geography, and class while also examining the role of textiles, science and material culture, and emerging technologies within subsistence and craft-based communities. Through practice-based and community-engaged research, she investigates cultural resilience, responsible fashion systems, ancestral knowledge, and the preservation of African diaspora and Indigenous textile traditions.

A committed university citizen, Professor Scrutchen has served in governance roles across The New School, including Co-Chair of the University Faculty Senate, Tri-Chair of the Middle States Self-Study Reaccreditation Steering Committee, and member of the University Strategic Planning Steering Committee. Her work reflects a sustained commitment to advancing equity, faculty success, shared governance, and inclusive academic communities.

Professor Scrutchen has presented internationally at conferences and symposia. Recent presentations include Prosperity Beyond Profit: Digital Innovations as Enablers of Cultural Resilience in Fashion Praxis at the Prosperity Fashion Conference in Florence; Shifting Dominant Geographies: Democratizing Fashion Epistemologies through Creative Technologies at the Routledge, Czech Technical University, and AMPS Conference in Prague; African American Migration to the West Coast, USA: Influence on Fashion and the Future of Fashion Practice at the Responsible Fashion Series USA.

She has also presented on equity and inclusive pedagogies, including Polycultural Allyship in Pedagogy: Infusing Black and Gender Identity into Fashion Canons at the American University of Paris; co-presenting Intersectional Praxis for Fashion Education: Navigating the Complexity of Institutional Change at the De-Fashioning Education Conference in Berlin; and Intersectional Approach to Pedagogy at The Future of International Fashion and Design Education Symposium; Planning for Diverse and Inclusive Hiring at the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Conference; and Empowering Women of Color through Strategic Relationship Management and Resilient Leadership at the Future World Changers in the Academy Conference at Virginia Tech.

Her recent publications include the chapter W.E.B. Du Bois: Fashion Through the Veil in Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists (2nd ed.). Current research projects explore decolonial fashion futures, African American migration and fashion innovation, and Woven Story, a textile-centered initiative examining the intersection of African and Indigenous textile legacies as pathways toward cultural continuity, relational prosperity, and future-making.

MFA in Design and Technology, Parsons School of Design

BFA in Weaving and Textile Design, Rochester Institute of Technology