Postdoctoral Research Associate in Linguistics, University of Manchester Khoi Nguyen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester researching the use of immigrant minority languages, or heritage languages. He is particularly interested in heritage langauge practices and policies in businesses, religious and cultural institutions, and the influence of space and context on linguistic behaviour.
Professor Architectural Theory, University of Manchester Albena Yaneva is Professor of Architectural Theory and Director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG) at the Manchester Urban Institute. She holds a DEA from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and a PhD from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (2001). She has been Visiting Professor at Princeton School of Architecture (2013), Parsons, New School (2015) and Politecnico di Turino (2018). She held the prestigious Lise Meitner Visiting Chair in Architecture at the University of Lund, Sweden (2017-2019). Her research is intrinsically transdisciplinary and crosses the boundaries of science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory and political philosophy. She is the author of seven monographs: The Making of a Building (Peter Lang 2009), Made by the OMA: An Ethnography of Design (010 Publishers 2009), Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Routledge 2012), Five Ways to Make Architecture Political. An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (Bloomsbury 2017), Crafting History: Archiving and the Quest for Architectural Legacy (Cornell University Press 2020), Latour for Architects (Routledge 2022), Architecture After Covid (Bloomsbury 2023). She co-authored The New Architecture of Science: Learning from Graphene (World Scientific Publishing 2020) with the Nobel Laureate in Physics Sir Kostya S. Novoselov. She is also the editor of What is Cosmopolitical Design? (Routledge 2015, with Alejandro Zaera-Polo). Her work has been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Thai, Polish, Turkish and Japanese. Yaneva has delivered more than 147 invited lectures at prestigious universities including in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Irland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysa, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA. 42 of these were keynote addresses at major conferences. She is the recipient of the RIBA President’s award for outstanding university-based research (2010). She is also the recipient of academic grants of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in Chicago (2003), the British Academy (2008), the EU (2008-2010), the Swedish Research Council (2019-2021) and the ESRC (2021-2022). She was a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economy and Society Research Council in the UK and serves as a reviewer for the National Science Foundations of USA, Switzerland, Austria, Irland and the Netherlands. Yaneva was a judge for the 2017 RIBA President's Medals in the Silver Medal category, RIBA London and a panel member (output assessor) for REF2021 - sub-panels C13 and D32.
Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare, University of California, Los Angeles Ayako Miyashita Ochoa is an Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Department of Social Welfare. She serves as Co-Director of Luskin’s new Center, UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice (UCLA HHIPP). UCLA HHIPP’s mission is to co-create research that informs policy and practice and addresses intersecting oppressions in order to improve community health. As Co-Director for the Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center (SCHPRC), Professor Miyashita collaborates on interdisciplinary research with community and academic partners to bring the most relevant and timely evidence to bear on California’s efforts to develop and maintain efficient, cost-effective, and accessible programs and services to people living with or at risk for HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and overdose. Her research interests focus on HIV and other related health disparities at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sexual and gender identity, and migrant status. In addition to serving as a faculty representative to the LGBTQ Affairs Committee at UCLA, Professor Miyashita is Co-Director of the Policy Impact Core for UCLA Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services (CHIPTS) as well as a Faculty Affiliate of UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR). Her teaching includes courses at UCLA Luskin, including LGBTQ Health, Law and Public Policy, Education and the Law, and Social Welfare Law and Ethics—a newly designed course. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA Luskin, Professor Miyashita directed the Los Angeles HIV Law and Policy Project, a legal services collaborative dedicated to addressing the unmet legal needs of primarily low-income people living with HIV (“PLWH”) in Los Angeles County. As a Director in the Clinical and Experiential Learning Department at UCLA School of Law, Professor Miyashita taught courses on the attorney-client relationship, client interviewing and counseling, and HIV law and policy. As the HIV Law and Policy Fellow at the Williams Institute in 2013-2015, her research included studies on HIV criminalization, unmet legal needs of PLWH in addition to issues related to HIV privacy and confidentiality. In her legal practice, Professor Miyashita provided direct legal services to low-income clients living with HIV in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles counties. This included assisting clients in obtaining disability benefits and other supports necessary to live independently. Her legal expertise runs a broad spectrum of public benefits including income support, health coverage, and other support services necessary for individuals living with disabilities. Professor Miyashita regularly provides training and education to clients, advocates, health and social service providers, and legislative and policymaking bodies. Professor Miyashita earned her Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley School of Law and was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2009.
Professor of Organizational Behavior, University of North Carolina – Greensboro Aichia Chuang is Professor of Organizational Behavior and PhD Director of Business Administration in the Department of Management, Bryan School of Business and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Before joining UNCG, she was the Fu-Bon Endowed Chair in Management and Distinguished Professor at the National Taiwan University in Taiwan where she was Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management in the Department of Business Administration. She earned her doctorate in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Minnesota and her B.A. in Sociology from the National Taiwan University. She served as visiting scholar at Stanford University in the US and Kyoto University in Japan. Chuang’s research interests include leadership, inclusion (person-environment fit and diversity), cross-cultural management, service climate and service performance, creativity, and multilevel theories and methods. Chuang’s research has appeared in such top journals as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Harvard Business Review. Chuang is currently the HR Ambassador of the HR Division of the Academy of Management representing Taiwan. She was a previous Associate Editor of Human Relations (Financial Times 50). She serves or has served on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management Review, Management and Organization Review, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management.
Professor of Fashion Design, University of Westminster Andrew Groves is Professor of Fashion Design at the University of Westminster, and the director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, which he founded in 2016. It houses over 2,000 examples of some of the most significant menswear garments from the last 250 years, including designer fashion, streetwear, everyday dress, sportswear, workwear, and uniforms. Recognising the relative lack of menswear in other fashion and museum collections, the WMA was established to create a significant teaching collection centred on men’s garments that could be used for object-based research by both design students and the fashion industry. A further key aim was to facilitate and publicise the knowledge and understanding of menswear as a distinct design discipline through public engagement and exhibitions. The collection holds over 2500 menswear garments from 1780 to the present day, with a primary focus on post-1940s British men's dress - clothing produced, designed, worn, or sold in Britain. It includes designer fashion, streetwear, everyday dress, sportswear, workwear, and uniforms. It receives over 800 visitors annually and is utilised for research purposes by students, academics, and designers in industry. It is inspired by Italian garment archives, specifically the Massimo Osti archive which was non-hierarchal, housing military, utilitarian, industrial, and fashion garments together. In 2019, Groves co-curated Invisible Men: An Anthology from the Westminster Menswear Archive, the United Kingdom’s largest menswear exhibition to date. It investigated the invisibility of menswear as a result of its inherent design language, which focuses on iterations of archetypal garments intended for specific functional, technical, or military use. It demonstrated how designers have disrupted this by making small but significant modifications to produce results that both replicate and subvert their source material. In 2021, Groves co-curated the exhibition Undercover – From Necessity to Luxury: The Evolution of Face Coverings During COVID-19. It explored how face coverings evolved over the period of a year, from being a functional PPE object in short supply to becoming an everyday object worn by millions. The WMA collected over a hundred examples of face coverings between April 2020 and April 2021, and the exhibition displayed 52 of these face coverings arranged chronologically to examine how the fashion industry rapidly adapted production, manufacturing, and online marketing to meet shifting consumer demands. He is currently the principal investigator of the AHRC-funded network project, Locating the absent shadow: exploring connections and encounters in British menswear. This international network is designed to investigate the cultural and industrial connections between London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Milan, Italy, and how they have influenced the production, display, and consumption of British menswear.
Lecturer, School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University Alexandra is a lecturer in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University and a member of RMIT’s Academic Board. With a PhD in sociology from the University of Sheffield and a master’s degree in cultural anthropology from UCL she explores the role of material and visual culture in relation to identity and processes of identification. She is also interested in the value of Indigenous knowledge systems for teaching ethical and sustainable fashion and textiles practices. Between 2010 and 2013 Alexandra worked as the postgraduate researcher on the ESRC-funded research project 'If the Shoe Fits: Footwear Identity and Transition' at the University of Sheffield. Her doctoral research explored the social lives of Clarks Originals shoes. In 2021 she founded the Footwear Research Network to support the ongoing development of academic enquiries into shoes and to enhance academic/industry collaboration.
