Elsa Ball

Role

Dr Elsa Ball is a Lecturer for BA (Hons) Fashion Design. Her academic responsibilities involve teaching across level 4, 5 and 6 with a specialist focus on culture and context. She supports students to develop critical, research‑led perspectives on the industry’s impact and its possible futures

Elsa works as a Research Fellow on the Back to Baselines in Circular Fashion & Textiles sub-network, which forms part of the Circular Fashion and Textile Network Plus, a collaborative research initiative funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Thematic area 4 addresses the Fashion and textiles industry’s skills requirements across three categories: professional, educational and consumer, both in terms of the current and future workforce, and best practice for effectively harnessing expertise to support sustainable development.

Career overview

Elsa is a researcher, educator and designer whose work sits at the intersection of fashion, culture and sustainability. Her MA in Culture, Style and Fashion informs a practice that brings critical, contextual and future‑focused perspectives into both her teaching and research and received an NTU Postgraduate Scholarship.

Before joining NTU, Elsa worked as a men shirting designer for a fashion supplier, where she worked closely with buying teams to create trend-led seasonal collections.

External activity

Conferences:

Ball, E. (2022) Fashioning the self through hair: intersections and overlaps of body, dress and identity. Dress and Body Association Conference. 5-6 Nov 2022. Indiana, USA [online]

Ball, E. (2021) Managing the Self in the Salon: Hairdressing, Identity and Sustainability. Responsible Fashion Series: Can Fashion Save the World? 20-22 Oct 2021. Antwerp, Belgium