Fashions & Styles on the Move
A lecture by David Eisner, Elke Gaugele, Anna Hambira, Sarah Held, and Constanze Pirch about an Erasmus+ project with students and academic staff from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of Namibia (UNAM).
Fostering decolonization, restitution, democracy, and social justice through fashion, textiles and design education is a vibrant and dynamic movement in Southern Africa. Within this transformative context, the Fashion and Styles/Design in Context department at IKL has been collaborating since 2024 under the umbrella of an Erasmus+ Project with students and academic staff from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and the University of Namibia (UNAM) in Windhoek. The project focuses on intercultural collaboration and the decolonization of cultural heritage through the lenses of fashion knowledge, design education, and artistic practice. Since October 2025, the cooperation is also supported by the Austrian Cultural Forum Pretoria.
The lecture presents encounters and perspectives gathered by participating lecturers during their journey to South Africa and Namibia in autumn 2025 and introduces the next step of the Erasmus+ Project — a Blended Intensive Program (BIP) with students and lecturers from the partner universities, taking place in Vienna at IKL in May 2026.