Laura Morgan

Laura joined the School of the Arts and Creative Industries at UWE and the Centre for Print Research in 2019 as a Wallscourt fellow in Design and Material Futures. Laura gained her PhD in 2016 for her cross-disciplinary research in textile design and digital laser engineering; and continued with post-doctoral research in this field before accepting a research and teaching fellowship at UWE.
Prior to research and teaching in the higher education sector, Laura began her career as a commercial designer in the fashion, textiles and footwear industries in senior roles involving design management and product development for blue chip retailers, boutique brands and fair-trade cooperatives. After several years working closely with international textile and garment manufacturers, Laura experienced a distinct lack of options available for sustainable design choices to be made within the supply chain. Since then, an interest in sustainability has driven her career and research choices, viewing her research as a welcome opportunity to address environmental sustainability and agility in material and textile processing.

Laura’s research explores digitally-driven surface treatments, specialising in laser materials processing for coloration and 3D finishing. Through design-driven interdisciplinary research and collaborative stakeholder engagement, she has ongoing research interests in: sustainable processes; material innovation; and the circular economy; integrating craft, design and material science in the application of new and emerging technologies.

Laura has worked closely with multiple industry stakeholders including Speedo, Camira, Stretchline, Crystal Martin and MAS Innovation, investigating laser-textile finishing techniques and their viability within agile textile supply chain models. She was awarded a PhD in 2016 for her thesis, “Laser Textile Design: The Development of Laser Dyeing and Laser Moulding Processes for Sustainable Design and Manufacture” and was involved in the research and development of a number of successful funding bids that came from this work, funding post-doctoral positions in the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and The School of the Arts at Loughborough University and the Textile Engineering and Materials Research Group at De Montfort University.

Laura has presented and exhibited her work internationally, haven spoken at multiple international conferences in specialist subject areas including Textiles, Biotechnology, The Circular Economy, and Laser Materials Processing, notably as an invited plenary speaker at The International Congress on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics. Laura’s publication record includes author and editorial credits and she is a reviewer for the Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice. As a founding organiser of Textile Intersections: Collaborations in Textile Design Research Conference, Laura co-curated the accompanying exhibitions in 2017 and 2019.

Laura contributes to post-graduate teaching at UWE as a PhD Supervisor, Principal Reviewer and Lecturer on MA Design. In previous roles, Laura contributed to teaching and assessment on BA (hons) Textiles Innovation and Design at Loughborough University, where her specialist subject areas included Woven Textiles and Integrated Digital Practice.