Juliana Sissons, Director, Rebel Tartan Project

A designer, educator, and author, Juliana is Course Leader of the MA Fashion Knitwear Design program at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She lectures at several universities internationally, and serves as an external examiner at Central St. Martins, London. Her fashion knitwear label focuses on the development of sculptural forms and pattern making, and her collections have sold to shops and clients in London, New York and Los Angeles. As a ‘Designer in Residence’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, her solo collections have been exhibited in the V&A galleries and in exhibitions at the Fashion and Textile Museum, The British Fashion Council, The Textile Institute and The Craft Council in London. Her work has been published in several fashion, design and art journals and she has written two books on knitwear published by Bloomsbury.

Claudia Arana, Bunka Gakuen University, Japan

Claudia Arana is an associate professor of fashion design in the Global Fashion Concentration MA program at Bunka Gakuen University. She earned a master’s degree in Fashion Design from Bunka Fashion Graduate University in 2018. Her research focuses on sustainability, exploring alternative methods of designing clothes and examining the socio-cultural context of materials such as Japanese hemp. Her publications cover topics such as activism towards sustainable development, the relationship between SDG 15 (Life on Land) and textile production, and the revival of Japanese hemp culture as a design practice for sustainable fashion.

Ashish Dhaka, Pearl Academy, India

Ashish is an academician, entrepreneur and researcher inspired by India’s great art and craft tradition. His specialties include ply-split braiding, utilizing post-consumer and post-production textile waste to create modular garments and accessories. Sustainability for him means accessing each stage of supply chain and developing methodologies inspired from Indian culture to mitigate waste and negative impact on the planet. His work has been showcased at Mercedes Benz Berlin Fashion Week (2013), London Design Week (2014), World of Wearable Art New Zealand (2019,2021 & 2024) and Top 20 under 35 by Design X Design (2023).

Scott Sutcliffe, Bunka Fashion College, Japan

Scott has served as the International Communications Associate at Bunka for over a decade. He earned his qualifications in Design and Fashion Design in Australia, with his educational experience extending to the UK and Japan. He fosters cross-cultural connections through collaborations with renowned fashion houses and global partners. By curating exhibitions featuring international fashion designers and organizing special talks and workshops with top fashion educators and artists, he aims to inspire students and expose them to diverse design approaches from various cultural perspectives.

Liya Zhou, Donghua University, China

Liya is an associate professor of knitwear design at the College of Fashion and Design, Donghua University. She obtained her doctoral degree in Textile Engineering from Donghua University in 2007. From 2003 to 2006, she studied and worked as a research assistant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Between 2007 and 2009, she served as a senior technical consultant and technician, and later as a project manager in the textile department of SGS, Shanghai. Since 2009, she has been a teacher and researcher at Donghua University. Her research interests include the design and development of functional knitwear, focusing on thermal and wet comfort, subjective and objective evaluations, intelligent testing related to physiological comfort, textile color matching, and intelligent recommendation based on emotional design.

Martha Glazzard, University of Dundee, Scotland

Martha is a lecturer, researcher and knit specialist at the University of Dundee (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design). She hold a PhD entitled ‘Re-Addressing The Role Of Knitted Textile Design Knowledge: Auxetic Textiles From A Practice-Led, Designer-Maker Perspective’, which addresses the role of design knowledge in the production of technical fabrics Her research covers a wide range of textile areas including experimental form-finding with material and making processes; sustainability practices; health and wellbeing; and electronic and sports textiles.