Theorem is an annual PhD conference of practice research in the visual arts and design hosted by Cambridge School of Art. Participating universities this year include: Nottingham Trent, University of Derby, Goldsmiths, University of Hertsfordshire, Norwich University of the Arts, University of Plymouth, and our own PhD researchers at Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge School of Art.

Join us on 4 July for a one-day symposium exploring topics as varied as how spacebecomes place, care and kinship with animals and the protection of their environments; a reappraisal of viewing screens according to spatial perceptions; the sublime Anthropocene and ruins within the colonialism of an Irish context; women’s domestication in the Iranian city of Mashhad; the autoethnographic picturebook and the impact of Singapore society on a family; investigating the shameful legacy of slave ownership; performing representations of the self, and many others.

Tony Kent from Nottingham Trent University will be our keynote speaker. Tony is Professor of Fashion Marketing in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University since 2013. His research interests include the convergence of physical and online worlds in fashion retail and branded experience, concepts of personalisation in fashion and sustainable fashion. He has authored over 60 conference papers and journal articles in business and design and has published three books most recently on Retail Design. He is an Executive member and Chair of the Research Committee of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutions, co-organiser of the International Colloquia on Design, Branding and Marketing and Deputy Chair of the Marketing Special Interest Group of the British Academy of Management.

His presentation, “Personalisation, identity and ownership” will explore the complexity of personalisation and identity in the face of relentless advances in digital design and communications, the changes in the concept of personalisation and their implications for personal identity. It focuses on a significant area of creative practice, fashion, and a fashion industry where producers are increasingly intent on acquiring personal data and new uses of big data that contribute to the ability to micro-market and to personalise individual products, services and experiences. The presentation focuses on the boundaries of fashion consumption, the problems of ownership and permission to personalise and the ways personalisation can be understood in a value system. It concludes with a summary of personalisation defined by consumer and producer interactivity, temporality and ownership to advance the conceptualisation of personalised and personal fashion identities.

www.theorem-phd.org