Kathryn Walters

Kathryn Walters is a practice-based textile design researcher specializing in weaving. Working fluently from handlooms to industrial machinery, her expertise spans craft, design, and production techniques.

Her research explores the transformative potential of woven textiles. A current focus is developing responsive behaviour from natural fibres, through the manipulation of both yarn structure and weave structure, creating material-structure systems.

As a member of the research collective Critical Textile Topologies, in a multi-disciplinary collaboration with designers Holly McQuillan and Karin Peterson, Walters wove zero-waste textile-form costumes for Liam Young’s speculative art film Planet City, produced for the NGV Melbourne Triennial 2020 and toured internationally. The costumes incorporated not only colourful surface patterning but also garment features such as sleeves and pockets woven directly into the textile. The costumes were exhibited at the Barbican in London as part of the ‘Our Time on Earth’ exhibition. In 2022 Walters and Peterson produced woven and moulded dragon scales for Swedish artist Lap-See Lam’s exhibition at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Walters’s research has been presented at conferences and symposia across a range of disciplines, including Textile Intersections, DIS (Designing Interactive Systems), CHI, Nordes, and the Swedish Symposium on Artistic Research.

Academic Experience

• Assistant Professor, School of Architecture and Design, IE University, Spain, 2025 - Present

• Guest researcher and experimental weaver in residence, Unstable Design Lab, University of Colorado Boulder, USA, 2023

• Guest lecturer, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, 2023

• Research assistant, Smart Textiles Design Lab, Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden, 2018 - 2019

Academic Background

• Ph.D. Candidate in Design, “Designing woven textiles with transformative behaviour”, Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden, Expecting

• MFA in Textile Design, Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden, 2018

• Bachelor in Photographic Design, Massey University Wellington, New Zealand, 2008

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs)

9- Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

15- Life on Land

12- Responsible Consumption and Production