Professor Jane Harris

Biography

Dr Jane Harris, Professor of Digital Design and Innovation, is Director of Research and Innovation (Stratford), and Director of UAL's Fashion, Textiles and Technology Institute. With over twenty years of experience as a research leader and mentor, Professor Harris has worked extensively across the UK and international HE sector, including MIT, and as Visiting Professor of Design Research, Geneva University of Art & Design (HEAD).

Her current role encompasses leadership of research and development partnerships aligned to the new UAL London College of Fashion campus (2023) in Stratford, as part of the emergent East Bank on the Queen Elizabeth Park. Initiatives to date include co-founding the Global Disability Innovation Hub, and leading on high value research funding awards with East Bank partners UCL, Loughborough University, QMUL V&A, Sadler’s Wells, Studio Wayne McGregor, wider UK industry and academic partners.

Director/PI of the ‘Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology’, one of nine UK based Creative R&D Partnership awards (£10.5m total value, 6.6m FEC), as part of an £80million Creative Industries Cluster Programme (CICP, 2018-24), funded by the Industrial Strategy and delivered by the AHRC (AH/S002804/1), Jane is also Principal Investigator of an AHRC award (AH/V00882X/1), 'DREEm: Digital, Regeneration and Experience Economy modelling' (£657,912, FEC), with over 100 UK wide visitor economy and creative industry partners and stakeholders, and Co-I, of an EPSRC XR Network+ in Virtual Production in the Digital Economy (EP/W020602/1) (2022-27). An experienced PI on UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) awards, Jane has received Fellowships from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA), the Arts Foundation, and awards from the Arts Council of England, the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation and Channel4.

An Advisor and Peer Reviewer to the European Commission for ICT (FP7 & Horizon 2020), Jane is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and has advised the EPSRC, NERC, IUK, the Arts Councils of England (ACE) and Scotland, Wellcome Trust, and the Crafts Council. A Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA), Jane is also digital advisor to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), and an advisory board member of the V&A Research Institute (VARI).

With affiliation to the UAL Creative Computing Institute (CCI), her Doctoral study, established novel approaches to digital imaging design and creative computing disciplines, informed by an established textile and material practice. Working with 3D CGI animation and real time tools, encompassing issues of craft and aesthetic, her pioneering XR work is a hybrid of design, artefact and experience, broadly impacting museum, e-commerce, CGI film /game narratives and design realms.

Co-author of ‘Digital Visions for Fashion+Textiles: Made-In-Code’, her own practice has been internationally exhibited including at: the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Tokyo Design Centre, Japan; Curtin Art Gallery, Perth Australia; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Jane’s editorial board and reviewer roles include: Textile, Journal of Cloth and Culture (Routledge); Digital Creativity, (Taylor and Francis); The Journal of Craft Research, (Intellect); The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, (Routledge). Jane is an experienced supervisor of research studies, examiner and viva chair.