Sara has a background in (e)textiles, service and participatory design across both academic and commercial contexts. Her research focuses on co-creating soft products and tactile-digital artefacts to support social interaction, health and wellbeing. Recent research includes her doctoral thesis ‘E-textiles Together’ which explores e-textiles for social connectedness in later life, and ‘Crafting Connections’, a collaboration founded with Lucy Robertson (DJCAD and Norwich University of the Arts) considering both traditional and e-textile crafting as a means to support and investigate wellbeing factors. Alongside exploring the intersection between soft materials and technology, Sara is keen to investigate the sourcing and legacy of (raw) materials used in these contexts to promote sustainable and responsible design and research.
Keywords
textiles, e-textiles, craft, social, connectedness, health and wellbeing
Areas for future work
‘Taxtiles’ (i.e., tactile (e)textiles, see the work of Barrass, 2007) as interfaces for social interaction; textiles and (e) textiles as communication; materiality and sustainability in social and general health and wellbeing contexts.