Dr. Sofia Pantouvaki is a scenographer and Professor of Costume Design at Aalto University, Finland. Her credits include over 90 designs for theatre, film, opera and dance productions in Europe and the curation of many international projects. She trained in scenography (PhD, University of the Arts London) and specialized in design for opera at La Scala, Milan, Italy. She was a post-doctoral research fellow with the Greek State Scholarship Foundation. She is a founding editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Studies in Costume and Performance, Vice-Head for Research of the OISTAT Performance Design/Costume Sub-commission and Chair of Critical Costume. Her research includes practice-based projects and collaborations with archives, museums and collections, and focuses on the critical enquiry of costume design and making, costume curation and clothing in the concentration camps of the Second World War. Sofia was costume curator for World Stage Design 2013; associate curator, Costume in Action, co-curator of the Finnish Student exhibit (Gold Medal at Prague Quadrennial 2015) and a jury member for Prague Quadrennial 2019. Her work has been exhibited on three continents, including at World Stage Design 2017.

Sofia is founder of the ‘Costume in Focus’ research group and led the research project ‘Costume Methodologies’ (2014–2018) funded by the Academy of Finland. Her publications include History of Dress: The Western World and Greece (2010, with E. Georgitsoyanni), Yannis Metsis: Athens Experimental Ballet (2011), Presence and Absence: The Performing Body (2014, edited with A. Anderson), Dress and Politics (2015, edited with E. Petridou) and The Tribes: A Walking Exhibition (2017, with S. Lotker). She is the lead editor of the recently published Performance Costume: New Perspectives and Methods (with P.McNeil, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).