Daniëlle Bruggeman

Professor of Fashion Daniëlle Bruggeman explores fashion as a social and cultural system intertwined with questions of identity, ethics and ecological responsibility. She studies the rise of new, critical fashion practices that explore alternative systemic approaches and promote more sustainable and ethical ways of making and wearing clothing.

Bruggeman aims to contribute to a cultural shift in fashion – from an industrial fast-fashion system driven by growth, mass production and consumption, towards fashion as a social and cultural practice of care, solidarity and imagination. Here, fashion is not merely about aesthetics or industry; it contributes to new values, ways of living together and forms of sustainability. She is helping to shape a new critical fashion discourse that shows fashion can also nurture empathy, awareness and connection.

'It’s important to look beyond the transactional, industrial logic of the fashion industry – to make space for alternative ways of making and wearing clothes, founded on care and solidarity with people, animals and nature.’

Daniëlle Bruggeman, Professor of Fashion

As Professor of Fashion at ArtEZ University of the Arts, Bruggeman works with designers, artists, students and researchers to develop new ways of making and thinking about fashion. She leads an interdisciplinary research community where theory, making and design practice come together – including within the master’s programme Critical Fashion Practices and the ArtEZ research community NewTexEco.

Bruggeman is also Professor by Special Appointment of Fashion and Sustainability at Radboud University. Through this dual role, she connects art and science around urgent themes such as sustainability, solidarity and ecological responsibility. In doing so, she fosters a new dialogue between creative practice and academic research – one in which imagination forms the basis for change.

Prof. Dr Daniëlle Bruggeman is a cultural scholar and Professor of Fashion at ArtEZ University of the Arts. In 2024, she was appointed Professor by Special Appointment of Fashion and Sustainability at Radboud University in Nijmegen. Her publications, including Dissolving the Ego of Fashion (2018) and Practising Solidarity (2025), show how fashion can be redefined as a social, cultural and ethical practice – one that takes both human and non-human relationships seriously.