Assoc Professor Robyn Healy

Position

Deputy Head Research

School /
Work Unit

Fashion & Textiles

Contact Details

+(61 3) 9925 3894

robyn.healy@rmit.edu.au

Location

Building: 8
Level: 10
Room: 9

City Campus

College/Portfolio

Design & Social Context

 

Key activities

Robyn Healy teaches undergraduate studies in 3rd and 4th year, with a particular emphasis upon developing professional capacity. She supervises post-graduate practice-based research students. Curating fashion cultures and environments; Robyn’s practice and research engages with public collections and contemporary fashion practice. She is Postgraduate coordinator for the fashion program.

She is a member of the SRC (School Research committee), SEM (School Executive Meeting) and a staff representative on the Fashion PAC (Program advisory committee).


Qualifications

B Arts ANU

Professional interests / links to industry

Director Craft Victoria board

Deputy Chair South project inc.

Costume committee National Trust of Australia (Victoria)

Previously Robyn was the Senior Curator of Fashion & Textiles at the National Gallery of Victoria, (1990-2003), beginning her career at the National Gallery of Australia, as the inaugural Curator of International Fashion & Textiles. She maintains close links with the museum profession, and publishes in both design and material culture fields.

Research/scholarship

A PHD candidate her project entitled Striptease: disrobe and display investigates the disembodied experience of fashion within the museum vernacular. By looking at the spectacle of shedding clothes, the ritual of undressing and devices of abandonment, this enquiry interrogates an emphatic dialogue of wear. Through speculative models and the tactic of empty dress this research considers the notion of ‘worn’ space.

She is developing a series of projects from the design archives of the Frances Burke Centre (FBC) at RMIT University, including the Nomadic archive.

She supervises the following students:

First Supervisor

Winnie Ha, Master of Arts (Fashion), The Breathing Dress (project) 2007-

Elizabeth Anya-Petrivna, Master of Arts (Fashion), The Artificial Flower (thesis) 2007-

Second Supervisor

Kate Rhodes, Master of Arts (Fashion), Dressing Poor: How an idea became a look (thesis) 2006-

Adele Varcoe, Master of Design, The Skin project (project) 2006-

Liliana Pomazan, PHD (Architecture & Design), The Ramifications of distance: PostWorld War II Australian fashion (thesis)

Pia Interlandi, PHD (Fashion), Dressing Death: Garments for the Grave (project), 2008-

Riccarda Bigolin, PHD (Fashion), Of technology, after tradition: Realising new hybridprocess models for fashion design (project), 2008-

Research Group

Robyn is a member of the Urban Interior (unresolved) (UI) research group.

2008 UI occupation, Craft Victoria funded by the DIA

2007 UI design colloquium, 5 October City Library funded by the SRC

Accomplishments/achievements/awards

2003 Centenary medal awarded for contribution to Australian society

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