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Jessica Hemmings

Professor

The Crafts and Fine Art Unit
Telephone
+46 31-786 59 85
+46 766-18 59 85
Mail
jessica.hemmings@hdk.gu.se
Visiting address
Kristinelundsgatan 6-8
41137 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

About Jessica Hemmings

textiles, contemporary craft, postcolonial literature

I joined HDK in January of 2017 as Professor of Craft. My research interests focus on understanding the contribution textiles make to contemporary society; representations of craft in postcolonial literature; how – and why – practitioners write. Indonesia and Zimbabwe are geographic areas of interest.

Current PhD supervision includes three candidates undertaking projects that explore: the spaces of community hand weaving; blacksmithing, tools and the body; textiles, dignity and mourning. External PhD supervisor for research projects at the University of the Arts Bremen and Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. I was external examiner for the MA Textiles at the Royal College of Art, London (2017–2020) and held an honorary Adjunct Professorship at UNSW, Sydney (2016–2018). External PhD examination roles include Australia, Britain, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and Sweden.

Editorial board member of Textile: the Journal of Cloth & Culture (Taylor & Francis) and Craft Research (Intellect).

The Reading Material research project is undertaken as Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Center for Material Culture, the Netherlands. Due to Covid-19 the project is now extended through 2023. HDK-Valand Craft is one of four Nordic partners associated with the Materiality, Maker Practices and Design Studio Pedagogy at the Digital Age (2020-2024) funded by the Academy of Finland.

Forthcoming publications include a monograph about the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen (ArtEZ: 2024), the Afterword to Humanitarian Handicrafts: History, Materiality, Trade (Manchester University Press: 2024) and “Toward a Minor Textile Architecture” in Entangled Histories of Art and Migration (Intellect: 2024).

Jessica Hemmings website