Dr Elaine Igoe

Biography

Elaine Igoe is Senior Lecturer in Textile Design at Chelsea College of Arts. Her research interests include design theory, postdigital and responsible textile and material futures.
She holds an undergraduate degree in Multi Media Textiles Design from Loughborough University, a Masters in Textiles for Fashion from Central St Martins and a PhD in Textiles from the Royal College of Art entitled "In Textasis: Matrixial Narratives of Textile Design" which focusses on articulating textile design practice within and beyond existing and emerging design theory.

She adopts materials, texts and processes and adapts and innovates with them to create new surfaces, fabrications and texts. Her award-winning work has included embroidered textile skin transfers, magnetised cloth coated in iron creating a ferrous needlecord and astrakhan and applying hair and silk fibres in the electrostatic flocking process.
Her theoretical work in design research utilises feminist qualitative research methods, exploring relationality through storytelling, autoethnography and metaphor. It both commentates on and aims to establish the position of textile design with design research discourses and global contexts.