Bonnie English

Brief description

Art and design historian and lecturer Bonnie English is an ex-pat Canadian who has taught theory at the Queensland College of Art since 1975. Her teaching and research has focused on 20th century visual arts history including the history of design, fashion/costume design history, and the interrelationship of fashion and art.

She was appointed Deputy-Director Staffing in 1992, Deputy-Director Teaching & Learning (the first Griffith academic appointed to this new position by the director GIHE) in 1993, Convenor of Art Theory 2000 and Co-Ordinator of the 1st Year Foundation Art Theory course (450 students)- a position held for 7 years. She was a an elected senior staff member of the Griffith University Council from 1996-98. She has had extensive postgraduate supervision, course development and assessment experience and has represented QCAon numerous Griffith University committees over the years.

In 1997, her CD-ROM Fashion and Art won a national ASCILITE award - Griffith's first multimedia flexible learning award. Her CD-ROM Japanese Postmodernist Fashion was a finalist in the 2004 ASCILITE awards. After two years of working as the Queensland College of Art project liaison officer at the Brisbane City Gallery, Bonnie co-curated the Tokyo Vogue: Japanese & Australian Fashion exhibition at the gallery in 1999, the first major fashion design exhibition held in Queensland and the first major exhibition of Japanese contemporary fashion in Australia. Bonnie has lectured and presented conference papers both nationally and internationally in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Oslo, New York and Granada, Spain.

Book Publications include A Cultural History of Fashion in the 20th Century: From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk for Berg Publishers, Oxford  2007 (2nd edition 2012); Little Books of Ideas: Fashion, A & C Black, London  2009 & Barron's Publishers, New York, 2010; Australian Fashion Unstitched,Cambridge University Press, Melbourne 2010; Japanese Fashion Designers: Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto & Rei Kawakubo: their work and influence, Berg Publishers, Oxford 2011.