Belkaïd-Neri, Leyla

Leyla Belkaïd-Neri is Professor and Fashion Design Director at Parsons Paris, the French campus of Parsons School of Design. She is a designer and a cultural anthropologist with a special interest in contemporary design as a transnational arena for the expression of new forms of cultural diversity in the deterritorialized world of global fashion. Her research focuses on the study of the interrelationships between sociality, design practices, materiality and the cultural constitution of fashion objects. She received her Doctoral degree in Anthropology form the Université de Lyon and her Master degree in design from the Accademia of Florence. She taught and served as Professor and Head of Fashion Design Department for the Geneva School of Art and Design, and later as Program Director of the Master in luxury management for the Geneva School of Business Administration. Her research work includes the project that led to the registration of the Rites and craftmanships associated with the costume tradition of Tlemcen, Algeria on the 2012 UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the first ever dress acknowledged as being part of the world cultural heritage.