Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology, 2019) Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) (Southern Cross University, 2013) Bachelor of Fine Arts (Fashion Design)/(Honours) (Queensland University of Technology, 2007/2010)
While currently embarking on another life adventure, for over a decade Dr Monika Holgar was involved as a student, sessional academic and research assistant in the Fashion discipline at QUT. She taught across a range of theory and practice-based units relating to fashion history, theory, sustainability, visual communication and textiles, and contributed to research projects relating to clothing recycling, mapping and exploring the localised circular economy of fashion and textiles, and wardrobe studies of wool garments in Australia for an industry application. During this time she was also involved as a coordinator, facilitator or speaker in numerous community-based events (public program workshops and talks, festivals, relational art exhibition) engaging with fashion sustainability and the cultural significance of textiles, and delivered guest lectures on clothing relationships, hand textile design processes, and utilising wardrobe research in fashion design. Her doctoral research explored participant perspectives of sharing personal garment stories, and the potential of garment storytelling as a durability strategy for wearers in their existing and ongoing wardrobes. This work formed a new connection across the areas of wardrobe research and product lifetimes, and offers practical and critical contributions to each of these areas. She is interested in exploring humble wearer-based strategies for improving fashion sustainability at the level of individuals’ wardrobes and everyday practices, and is inspired overall by issues of clothes as material culture, ways of capturing clothing experience, value and use, durability, dematerialisation and practice theory-informed approaches to fashion sustainability.