Jessica Hemmings

Jessica Hemmings
Born
Wales, United Kingdom
Alma materRhode Island School of Design
University of London
University of Edinburgh
OccupationsAcademic, writer
Websitewww.jessicahemmings.com

Jessica Hemmings is a British writer and academic who writes about textiles and culture.

Early life

Born in Wales, Jessica Hemmings spent her childhood in Indonesia and the United States.[1]

She graduated with a BFA in Textile Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 2000. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Edinburgh in 2006, is published by Kalliope paperbacks under the title, Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth (2008).[1]

Career

Hemmings is a Professor of Craft (2017-present) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden[1] and Professor II (2024-present) at the Oslo School of Architecture & Design, Norway.[2] Previous academic appointments include Professor of Visual Culture and Head of the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin (2012-2016); Deputy Director of Research and Head of Context, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh (2010-2012); Associate Director of the Centre for Visual & Cultural Studies, Edinburgh College of Art (2008-2010); Reader in Textile Culture, Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, England (2008). She is a member of the editorial boards of TEXTILE: the journal of cloth & culture (Taylor & Francis)[1][3] and Craft Research (Intellect).[4]

As a writer, she has published Warp and Weft: Woven Textiles in Fashion, Art and Interiors (2012) and Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth (2008), and edited three books. Based on her editorial project Cultural Threads, Hemmings curated Migrations, an international traveling exhibition (2015-2017).[5][6] The Cultural Threads book inspired Dutch curator Liza Swaving's exhibition of the same name held at the TextielMuseum, Tilburg, the Netherlands (24 November – 12 May 2019).[7]

Awards

  • 2020–2023 Rita Bolland Fellowship at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands[8]
  • 2025–2027 Carceral Craft: the material of oppression or expression? Swedish Research Council Grant[9]

Selected lectures

Universidad de Sevilla, Spain (2023),[10] Nordic Textile Art Network, Reykjavik, Iceland (2019),[11] Zeitz MOCCA, Cape Town, South Africa (2018),[12] University of British Columbia, Canada (2017),[1] ObjectSpace, New Zealand (2016),[13] Design Canberra Festival, Australia (2015), SOFA Chicago New Voices Lecture (2012),[14] Cranbrook Academy of Art (2012)[15] INIVA, London (2009).[16]

Books

  • The Textile Reader (second edition), Bloomsbury (9 February 2023), ISBN 9781350239845
  • Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today, Bloomsbury Academic (15 January 2015), ISBN 978-1472524997[5]
  • Warp and Weft: Woven Textiles in Fashion, Art and Interiors, A&C Black Visual Arts (6 December 2012), ISBN 978-1408134443[1]
  • The Textile Reader, Berg Publishers (13 March 2012), ISBN 978-1847886347
  • In the Loop: Knitting Now, Black Dog Press (11 May 2010), ISBN 978-1906155964[17]
  • Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth, kalliope paperbacks; 1st Edition (1 January 2008), [1] ISBN 978-3981079852

Selected Articles

  • "Made for European Trade by Prisoners in Java: Batik Production in the Women's Prisons of Semarang and Yogyakarta in the Early Twentieth Century" (2025) The Journal of Modern Craft [18]
  • "Iris van Herpen: The Body" (2025) TEXTILE: cloth and culture [19]
  • "Iris van Herpen: Tools" (2025) TEXTILE: cloth and culture [20]
  • "Iris van Herpen: Collaboration" (2025) TEXTILE: cloth and culture [21]
  • "Makers Who Move: Solitary Exercise and the Creative Mind" (2024) PARSE[22]
  • "Maximum Space Around the Typewriter: Yvonne Vera and the Craft of Writing" (2021) Wasafiri[23]
  • "That's Not Your Story: Faith Ringgold Publishing on Cloth" (2020) PARSE [24]
  • "Floppy Cloth: Textile Exhibition Strategies Inside the White Cube" (2019) TEXTILE: cloth and culture [25]

Selected Book Chapters

  • "Toward a Minor Textile Architecture" (2024) Entangled Histories of Art and Migration (University of Chicago Press & Intellect)[26]
  • "Can That Be Taught? Lessons in Embodied Knowledge from Memoir Writing for Craft & Design Education" (2023) Somaesthetics and Design Culture (Brill)[27]
  • "Material Scent: textiles beyond touch" (2023) Kinesic Intelligence in the Humanities (Routledge) [28]
  • "Textual Agency: pitfalls and potentials" (2020) Design and Agency (Bloomsbury) [29]
  • "Knitting after Making: what we do with what we make" (2019) Textiles, Community, Controversy: The Knitting Map [30]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Craft and Labour – A Seminar with Jessica Hemmings". The University of British Columbia. 10 February 2017.
  2. ^ "| The Oslo School of Architecture and Design". aho.no. Retrieved 4 November 2024.
  3. ^ "Advisory Board". Taylor & Francis.
  4. ^ "Intellect Books | About Jessica Hemmings". Intellect Books. Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Migrations: an exhibition of international textile works guest curated by Jessica Hemmings in collaboration with NCAD Gallery". NCAD. 30 April 2015.
  6. ^ Tipton, Gemma (23 July 2016). "Weaving the fabric of life, history and culture". The Irish Times.
  7. ^ Edelkoort, Lidewij (1 May 2019). "Talking Textiles Cultural Thread".
  8. ^ "Material Culture Fellowships". 29 October 2019.
  9. ^ "Humanities and social sciences". 12 April 2025.
  10. ^ "Testing Textile Texts: the material narratives of Florenica Walfisch, Sheila Hicks & Andreas Escbach". 18 December 2023.
  11. ^ "The Textile Art of Tomorrow". 30 March 2019.
  12. ^ "Material Matters in Paintings at the End of an Era". 2 December 2018.
  13. ^ "Jessica Hemmings Making Meaning Craft Labour". 17 November 2017.
  14. ^ "Site and Sight: Surveying the New Sense of Textile Art". 2 November 2012.
  15. ^ "Introversion and Knitting: rethinking solitary production". 31 October 2012.
  16. ^ "The Ambi Generation: Second Skins". 29 April 2009.
  17. ^ Lewis, Perri (14 April 2010). "It's knitting, but not as we know it". The Guardian.
  18. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17496772.2025.2580828?src=
  19. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080.14759756.2025.2554487?src=exp-la
  20. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080.14759756.2025.2542722?src=recsys
  21. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2025.2543699?src=
  22. ^ https://parsejournal.com/article/makers-who-move-solitary-exercise-and-the-creative-mind/
  23. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690055.2021.1918424
  24. ^ https://parsejournal.com/article/thats-not-your-story-faith-ringgold-publishing-on-cloth/
  25. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2019.1588688
  26. ^ https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/E/bo238312675.htlm
  27. ^ https://brill.com/display/title/63166?rskey=9slpTs&result=2
  28. ^ https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003299141/kinesic-intelligence-humanities-guillemette-bolens
  29. ^ https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/design-and-agency-9781350063792/
  30. ^ https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/textiles-community-and-controversy-9781350027510/
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Hemmings