Jessica Hemmings

Jessica Hemmings writes about textiles. She studied Textile Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA (Honors) in 1999 and Comparative Literature (Africa/Asia) at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, earning an MA (Distinction) in 2000. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Edinburgh in 2006, was published by kalliope paperbacks under the title Yvonne Vera: The Voice of Cloth (2008). In 2010 she edited a collection of essays titled In the Loop: Knitting Now (Black Dog), and in 2012 edited The Textile Reader (Berg) and wrote Warp & Weft (Bloomsbury). Her editorial and curatorial project Cultural Threads is about postcolonial thinking and contemporary textile practice (Bloomsbury, 2015) and was accompanied by a travelling exhibition Migrations (2015–17).  

In 2022 Jessica co-edited Violence: materiality (PARSE Journal issue 15, with Ole Lützow-Holm), and in 2020 Intersections (issue 11, with Kristina Hagström-Ståhl and Jyoti Mistry). Recent writing includes “Can That Be Taught? lessons in tacit knowledge” in Somaesthetics and Design Culture (Brill, 2023); “Material Scent: Textiles Beyond Touch” in Kinesic Intelligence in the Humanities (Routledge, 2023); and the second edition of The Textile Reader (Bloomsbury, 2023). She is currently Professor of Craft at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and was the Rita Bolland Fellow at the Research Centre for Material Culture, the Netherlands (2020–23).