Sandra Niessen

Sandra Niessen, PhD (Leiden University 1985), is a Canadian/Dutch cultural anthropologist, whose fieldwork has focused primarily on the clothing culture of the Batak people inhabiting the region around Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Her research on the handwoven textile repertory over a period of 45 years has resulted in numerous books, articles and films. 

The Batak tradition and other indigenous clothing traditions throughout the world are in sharp decline. Since 2003, Sandra has been writing to raise awareness of how clothing cultures are sacrificed by coloniality and fashion. She is a founding member of both the Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion (RCDF) and Fashion Act Now (FAN), activist organizations invested in breaking the dominance of growth-based, industrial fashion and nurturing indigenous, small-scale, sustainable clothing cultures: clothing commons.