Featured Projects

Our research takes many forms. These three projects reflect our commitment to developing new knowledge around material culture, design, and the study of textiles. “Material Histories of Home Economics” reflects the new research on the role of material culture in schools that were the precursor to the School of Human Ecology. It features the original scholarly contributions of more than twenty researchers at all career stages. For the past five years, the newly named “Pathways: A Toolkit for Educators, Designers, Researchers, and Consumers on Understanding Design Sovereignty and Cultural Appropriation” program has offered tools for designers and design educators to support and talk about design sovereignty. Featured at the American Alliance of Museums annual meeting and published in Museum Magazine, this resource has served hundreds of design students and their instructors. The “Artificial Flowers Project” connects the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s remarkable Special Collections. This project reframes an eighteenth-century instruction manual on creating artificial flowers through the lens of the Textile Collection, asking major intellectual questions about object-based knowledge and the possibilities of practice-based research.