Aayushi Badhwar holds a PhD focused on the adoption of emerging traceable technologies within fashion and textile businesses. Her research expertise and journal publications centre on the application of blockchain technology to address key supply chain challenges, including counterfeiting, greenwashing, and the lack of transparency and traceability in current systems. Professionally, she lectures at RMIT University in the School of Fashion and Textiles, specialising in the intersection of enterprise and technology within the fashion industry.
RICHA BANSAL has more than 30 years of media industry experience, of which the last 20 years have been with leading fashion magazines in both B2B and B2C domains. Her most recent position was at the helm of editoral affairs at Fibre2Fashion, one of India’s leading B2B media conglomerates, which has a prominent presence across magazines, events and websites.
Richa has worked at the head of a slew of premium B2B magazines, including Images Business of Fashion, Shoes & Accessories India and the iconic Sportswear International, of which she was the Launch Editor. This was preceded by prolific work with newspapers, wire services and news portals, including Indiatimes.com, India Abroad News Service (IANS), Press Trust of India (PTI) and the Sentinel.
Dr Victoria Barnes is Reader in Commercial Law at Brunel University London. Her research examines contract, commercial and corporate law from transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. She unpicks pivotal historic events, such as landmark cases, and place them in context. Global actors, such as judges, lawyers, and other influential figures, including CEOs, feature heavily in her work often as catalysts for socio-legal change. She has published around 40 journal articles and book chapters on these themes.
Charlotte Barras is a materials scientist with experience across research, product development, technical textiles, and materials chemistry sustainable engineering. Her work has focused on developing and characterising advanced materials for environmental and performance-driven applications, including PFAS removal from water, filtration technologies, technical textiles, and electrocatalysts for hydrogen energy production. Barras has developed strong skills in experimental design, materials characterisation, data analysis, technical reporting, and cross-functional collaboration.
Bente Bauer is Co-Founder & Director at 2B Policy. 2B Policy bridges the gap between real-world business challenges and a fast-moving legislative landscape. Based in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Berlin, her team empowers companies and organisations in the consumer goods and services sectors to make sense of complex sustainability regulations and turn them into strategic action.
Prof Steve Beeby holds a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies on the topic of e-textile engineering. His research interests involve the application of flexible electronics, smart printable materials and energy harvesting technologies to electronic textiles (e-textiles).
Dr Sarah Bendall is a Research Fellow at the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She researches and writes about the production, trade and consumption of global commodities and fashionable consumer goods between 1500-1800. She is the author of Shaping Femininity.
Dr Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie is a researcher with interests in studying Sociology and African studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Before her appointment at KNUST, she worked for three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana on the project titled "Advancing Creative Industry for Development in Ghana". This project explored how the Ghanaian creative industry can be enhanced to contribute to national development.
Dr. Bobie obtained her PhD from the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her PhD explored how contemporary Africa fashion designers combine global influence with ethno-cultural factors to produce aesthetic cosmpolitan fashion in Lagos, Nigeria. She argues that, the conscious intersection of the global with the local by African designers, positions African fashion across national borders, emanating in the creation of Aesthetic Cosmopoltanism fashion.
Adwoa obtained her MPhil degree at the University of Ghana from the year 2014 and Bachelor’s at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana) in 2010. At the MPhil, she worked on “The Youth in the Ghanaian Fashion Industry” which discusses the creativity of young Ghanaian entrepreneurs who are changing the face of fashion with no or little formal training in fashion.
She participated in the first CASB/CODESRIA Summer School programme through which she earned a scholarship with the Fondation Oumou Dilly for her PhD. Adwoa worked as research assistant and also as a freelance research consultant from 2014 to 2016. Major among the projects was “Because I Am a Girl” project funded by Plan International, a United Kingdom based NGO and others funded by Marie Stopes and MasterCard Foundation.
Martijn Boersma is Associate Professor (Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery) at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. He was previously a (senior) lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Business School. His areas of interest include human trafficking and modern slavery, business and human rights corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, labour standards and employment relations, multistakeholder initiatives and social sustainability in supply chains. Martijn has extensively published on these topics.
Achilleas Boukis is an Associate Professor in Marketing at the University of Birmingham. Achilleas received his PhD from Strathclyde University (2014). His interests include branding, blockchain and service interactions in physical and technology-mediated contexts. Achilleas has published his research in academic journals such as Journal of Business Research, Tourism Management, Psychology & Marketing and European Journal of Marketing.