Sitting in Between the Art School and Science

This interview is part of a new series spotlighting PhD projects across Central Saint Martins. In the first interview Marketa Uhlirova, Reader in Fashion, Cinema and Visual Studies, speaks to Ruth Lloyd, a current PhD student at Central Saint Martins.

You recently submitted your thesis for examination, so this is a good moment to reflect on your PhD journey. How do you view it from where you are now?

During my MA at the Royal College of Art in 2019, I began to focus on sustainable colour systems for printed textiles. I became particularly interested in microbial colour – pigments produced through the fermentation of microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast, fungi or algae – after discovering the work of the designer Natsai Audrey Chieza, an early pioneer of bacterial pigments for textiles. At that point, academic research in the field had already been developing since the mid-1990s but its industrial applications have only gathered pace over the last decade. This has been propelled largely through innovative start-ups.

During COVID in 2020, when access to workshops was cut off, my practice shifted from hands-on making to research. That shift was a turning point. It made me realise I wanted to pursue research more seriously. Over the summer between my MA and PhD, I negotiated and established a creative residency with the microbial dye company Colourifix. I then began my PhD as an independent researcher based at Central Saint Martins, with the informal support of Colourifix during the first year while I adapted their technology for textile printing. As the work became more intertwined, I pushed for a formal partnership.

That negotiation transformed the trajectory of the PhD. Colourifix came on board as a full partner, and I became an embedded researcher within the company, supported by two supervisors at Central Saint Martins and a scientific supervisor at Colourifix. Having access to industrial-scale resources and transdisciplinary expertise fundamentally changed what the research could be, allowing me to develop processes directly within an industry context rather than in isolation. At the same time, I was part of the Living Systems Lab research community at Central Saint Martins, which helped frame my enquiry? People often ask me how I ‘found’ this PhD but I didn’t. I made it happen through persistence and perseverance.

What drives you?

As a teacher and designer, I came to understand the environmental impact of existing textile colour systems. They are not only toxic but also highly water and energy-intensive. At the same time, to get rid of colour cannot be the answer. Colour and pattern are an important part of how we experience textiles. They bring joy and cultural value, and it would be a shame to lose that, even if that would be the more sustainable option.

The issue isn’t just about developing ‘greener’ dyes. It's rethinking the system as a whole. While colouring textiles at an industrial scale will always have negative impact, I was driven to explore how that impact could be significantly reduced. To me, microbial colour represents a pathway towards that – not a perfect solution but a way of making the system much less harmful.

What have been your main discoveries?

My PhD focused on developing industrial textile printing processes using microbial colourants. Alongside this I developed a colour system to support their adoption within the textile industry – a structured framework for colour specification and communication between designers and manufacturers. I produced validated printing protocols that are ready to be used in industrial settings: mix this, print and fix under these conditions and achieve consistent results within defined tolerances.

The first protocols I developed were for pink and blue on polyester. Although my original aim was to work with natural fibres, these particular microbial pigments performed most reliably on synthetics. This turned out to be a pragmatic outcome, given that over half of global textile production is polyester. Plus it provides a viable entry point for the technology, and there is then the potential to support further development towards applications on natural fibres.

What would you say the PhD brought to this project?

If I had been working only as an employee at Colourifix, it would have been a very different project. As a PhD researcher, I was able to retain a level of autonomy – the objectives were defined from the outset in my proposal and couldn’t be reshaped by the company. That allowed me to set clear boundaries around what was and what wasn't part of the PhD project. Just as importantly, my supervisors helped me keep the work grounded in research and design, particularly at points where I risked being pulled too deeply into company priorities.

That doesn't sound like a typical PhD!

Definitely not. I was fortunate to do my research while already embedded within industry, rather than working towards that after graduation. Instead of operating as a solo academic, I became part of an industrial ecosystem across Norwich and Cambridge. Over the course of the partnership, Colourifix invested significantly in the research, including lab-scale industrial printing and fixation equipment. I spent around half my time on-site, working with fermentation teams, microbiologists and textile quality specialists. Rather than growing small-scale cultures as I had during my MA, I was able to access large volumes of bacterial culture produced by purpose-designed microorganisms. I also worked closely with scientists and engineers across the company, developing print processes as my area of expertise.

Crucially, what began as an exploratory project became central to Colourifix’s business model – I built their print team, and the processes developed are now embedded within the company. They own the intellectual property, which was a trade-off I'd accepted in order to support wider industry impact. My motivation had always been to shift textile practices towards more climate-positive approaches.

But my PhD was also atypical in another way because my university's PhD research training and environment wasn't always a good fit. Much of the research here is qualitative whereas mine involved processing large datasets. It doesn't sit neatly within an art school model but equally, it doesn't fully align with scientific research either. It sits somewhere in between, which has been both a challenge and, I think, a strength.

Would you say your design background shaped your approach to this project differently from how a scientist might have approached it?

To demonstrate the value of design to Colourifix proved a challenge to begin with. But I was used to taking on multiple roles at once: designer, engineer, microbiologist. I wouldn’t describe myself simply as a designer – I’m a design researcher and process developer at heart. In this research, I developed colour processes with design-led validation at either end. I saw my role as bridging design and industrial process development – underpinning microbial textile printing from a designer’s perspective.

Everything I did was informed by design thinking: edge definition, colour bleeding, overprinting, colour mixing. I was constantly balancing aesthetics with technical performance. My methodology was design-led at its core, meaning the processes themselves were the primary research output, not just the final samples. At the same time, my supervisors have challenged me by asking, ‘Where is the design?’ – which was difficult at times because my work at the time was perhaps closer to engineering. But within biodesign right now, you can’t operate solely as a designer; the processes don’t fully exist yet, so you have to be involved in creating them.

There are also realities I would have missed if I had worked independently. I now think it’s essential for designers to understand industrial processes, and for design-–led thinking to be embedded early – not just applied at the point of the final product. Working at an industrial level demands consistency; when batches fall outside tolerance, they are rejected, wasting time and resources. Not every designer is drawn to that level of repetition – printing test cards thousands of times – but for me, that process-driven approach is central to how I work.

Was there a particular point in your PhD journey where you felt like you made a turn towards something unexpected?

There were several turning points, shaped by the hybrid nature of the project. Working within Colourifix meant navigating different priorities and timelines, and as the PhD progressed I also began taking on work outside of it. My supervisors supporting that but also played a key role in drawing boundaries.

Partway through I was diagnosed with dyslexia. It took PhD-level complexity to reveal that – I was running multiple experimental workflows in parallel, refining some processes while developing others, and trying to hold all of that at once. I found it particularly difficult to communicate the research in a linear, chronological way.

My supervisor led me to develop new ways of structuring and articulating the work, through diagrams and more distilled forms of analysis. I learned how to communicate dozens of experiments in clearer and more streamlined ways – a crucial learning curve.

What are the ethics of working with living organisms? Was there an established ethical framework when you first began?

The scientific community has a relatively clear position: microorganisms are not considered sentient, and working with them is governed by strict biosafety protocols around containment, use and inactivation. It’s the creative fields that have a more open and sometimes more speculative ethical debate, which can lead to the projection of human characteristics onto non-human systems.

Microbial colourants are typically secondary metabolites – they are compounds produced in response to specific environmental conditions, such as competition or stress. They require very particular conditions to grow and produce colour efficiently, and if those conditions aren’t met, they simply stop. Working with them becomes a process of understanding what they need and how to create the right environment.

For me, the ethical question shifts when you consider microorganisms at an industrial scale. Microbial fermentation is relatively low-energy and can have a significantly lower environmental impact than conventional dye processes. My position is that this work should be grounded in respect and care – not because microorganisms have feelings, but because they are part of broader living systems. Whether working with soil, plants or microbes, if those systems are exploited or destabilised, they fail. It’s ultimately about how to make these systems less harmful.