Eve Fraser, BA(BSE)’22, who graduated with a Joint Honours degree in Environment and Political Science, has published the article “Increasing Transparency in Global Supply Chains: The Case of the Fast Fashion Industry” in the journal Sustainability. Research for the article, which argues that increasing transparency is necessary to make the fashion industry more sustainable in the near future, was funded by a 2021 BURA Award. Now Fraser is doing a Master's in the Nature, Society and Environmental Governance program at Oxford University’s School of Geography and Environment. She plans a dissertation on environmental activism and discourse in France, specifically feminist ecology and French political ecology.
How did your BURA-funded work contribute toward your academic and career progress?
“It is really not an understatement to say that the BURA-funded work changed the direction of my academic career. The project gave me research experience, but also much more than that. It helped me hone my analytical skills, and I think the project is the reason I was accepted at Oxford. The themes I touched on in my project are central themes to the course I am now studying in, and the links I made throughout the whole process gave me a much better understanding of environmental issues like transnational governance, environmental policy-making, but also corporate sustainability. The privilege of having received an award for something which I had taken to be a ‘small’ project for my undergraduate gave me the confidence to apply to Oxford in the first place, and gave me the relevant experience to feel confident in starting the process of research for my master’s dissertation. The topic of my research has also oriented me towards a potential career in sustainable fashion.”
What motivates your research, what larger impact would you like it to have, and how has your work in the Bieler school helped with those goals?
“I started the research project because I wanted to help explain roadblocks and solutions to environmental change in our political and economic systems. At the core of that project were questions that kept reappearing: why are these companies not transparent (nor sustainable)? And what can we learn from those that are? I am more convinced than ever of the key role that policy plays, and what I want to research is how we can push change when there are strong interests invested in the status quo. More broadly, I would like to work towards system change, and I am particularly interested in environmental policy-making. My work in the Bieler school also gave me the groundwork for any future endeavours in environmentalism. At the Bieler School of Environment, I learnt about intersectionality, the legacies of colonialism, the ties between our economic systems and the climate crisis. It broadened my mind, and helped me look at a problem from so many different perspectives.
Read Eve Fraser’s article “Increasing Transparency in Global Supply Chains: The Case of the Fast Fashion Industry," in Sustainability here.