Nadia Malik

Research Summary:

This proposal calls for an investigation into the relationship / space between costume pedagogy and costume practice at the intersection of student engagement with industry and industry engagement with students, known in the UK as ‘Knowledge Exchange’ or ‘KE’. There is a drive for this kind of two-way teaching and learning experience between students in Higher Education and practitioners to be embedded into curricula. KE immerses students into real practice with professionals and inherently combines practice and pedagogy with the aim of engaging all those involved in creating both new thinking in the subject and new ways of working. My interest is in how costume students and professionals can work together as a matter of course. This raises pedagogical questions that could be approached as case studies from different angles: What are innovative ways of using emerging creative technologies to develop and disseminate costume work? How might we develop meaningful industry exchange between practitioners and students as part of an embedded learning experience? What might the necessary costume skillsets be for success in a flexible / unknowable performance industry future? Focusing on the pedagogical aspects of these questions, it may be argued that KE overall is necessary in order for new pedagogical approaches to emerge for the field of costume teaching and practice and may connect more broadly to an investigation into how student engagement with the performance industry might provide a platform for new approaches to performance teaching more widely.

Biography:

Nadia Malik is the Programme Director for the Performance Courses at London College of Fashion, UAL. She has previously been Course Leader for BA Costume Design and Making at Nottingham Trent University and Costume With Textiles at the University of Huddersfield, Head of Wardrobe at the University of Essex and lectured at various other universities.

Nadia is the Reviews Editor (Exhibitions and Events) for the journal Studies in Costume and Performance, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a committee member of the Society of British Theatre Designers and a PhD candidate at Aalto University, Helsinki. She holds a BA in Textile Design from Nottingham Trent University and an MA in Costume Design for Performance from London College of Fashion, UAL.

Nadia’s design work has encompassed new and classic writing, opera, folk and contemporary dance, experimental site-specific devised work and live art, including international festivals. With a collaborative approach to performance devising, her work explores the human body, movement, and how costume-led design practice can engage audiences with performance. She has also curated and produced costume events.

Supervising Professor: Sofia Pantouvaki

Thesis Advisors: Sofia Pantouvaki, Elizabeth Caldwell (external)