Connected Threads Project Page

Professor Rong Zheng

Donghua University, Shanghai

Professor Rong Zheng is the project’s Chinese academic partner. Rong is a Professor and principal researcher at the Shanghai International Fashion Innovation Centre in Donghua University, Shanghai, China. Her main research focuses on clothing (ergonomic) science & product inclusive design, clothing comfort and human factor design.

Elsa Cox

Augmented Fashion, Project Manager

Elsa Cox is Robert Gordon University’s Orkney Development Manager based in Orkney. Focusing on remote, rural and island practice, Elsa works across the University to promote place-based approaches to research, teaching, student activity and skills and entrepreneurship with an emphasis on local stakeholder engagement. 

Elsa represents RGU within UArctic and serves on the Board of the Scottish Arctic Network (ScAN), leading related initiatives and supporting Scotland’s ambition for enhanced Arctic cooperation. Elsa is also a Board Member of the Pier Arts Centre. 

Prior to joining Robert Gordon University, Elsa spent more than 15 years in the museum sector, most recently as Senior Curator of Technology at the National Museum of Scotland. She is now embarking on a PhD exploring the community value of natural science collections in small museums in rural and island settings in Scotland and the Arctic.

Lyndsay Mesjar

Augmented Fashion, Research Assistant

Lyndsay Mesjar (née Bloice) has been a Research Assistant at Robert Gordon University, Scotland since 2012. She is currently a part-time doctoral candidate (thesis topic: brokering knowledge via intermediary organisations in the creative industries) and is Module Co-ordinator for LLM008 Cataloguing & Classification. She has worked on research projects for a variety of funders, including UKRI, Horizon Europe, and Interreg, as well as on smaller projects funded by quangos, local government, and trades bodies. Her work broadly falls within the area of social and cultural research, with a particular focus on knowledge and information.

Josie Steed

Augmented Fashion

Josie Steed is an Associate Professor within Gray’s School of Art and Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Her research explores the intersection of fashion, textiles, sustainability and emerging technologies, investigating how digital and immersive technologies can support the preservation, communication and future development of fashion and textile heritage.

As Co-Director of the SPARK* (Studio for Practice & Research in Knowledge) research centre and Research Coordinator for Gray’s School of Art, Josie leads interdisciplinary collaborations connecting design, technology, cultural heritage and industry. Her research examines how augmented and extended reality can enhance engagement with heritage textiles, support sustainable fashion practices and create new forms of digital storytelling.

She has secured funding from UK Research and Innovation and industry partners and has published internationally on sustainable fashion, heritage textiles, digital innovation and practice-based research. She also supervises doctoral researchers and champions interdisciplinary research with societal impact.

Dr Karen Cross

Augmented Fashion

Dr Karen Cross is Associate Dean for Academic Development and Student Experience within Gray’s School of Art and Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, Scotland. She is subject lead for the Fashion Management programme and has been involved in a series of funded research projects exploring Scottish textiles in remote and rural economies in the contexts of both sustainability and digitisation. Her research interests focus on the positive impacts of fashion, whether that is through the generation of employment opportunities, the preservation of culture, heritage and artisan fashion and textile practices, or the role of fashion in providing a sense of identity, community and wellbeing.

Professor Yang Jiang

Professor of Immersive Design

Professor Yang Jiang is a Professor of Immersive Design in the School of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Social Science and Education at the University of Hull in the UK. She is a fellow of HEA, and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College. Yang leads and co-leads multi-million pounds cross disciplinary research portfolio, collaborating with researchers, communities and sectors from completely different backgrounds.

Her research and teaching interests are mainly in 3D visualizations, Immersive Technologies, computer gaming and computer-generated 3D character animations, as well as real-time motion capture. She collaborates with artists and creative media industries on 3D visualizations to create interesting animation characters; reconstruct events from videos to enrich computer animations; 3D visualizations for GIS; new games and user-centered design in the Human-Computer Interaction area. She also provides consultancy and other forms of income generation in the Digital Media area.

Connected Threads

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