(Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer and curator. She is Professor of Visual Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, also working with early career researchers and with developing practice research. She trained as a painter (Sheffield School of Art, Maidstone College of Art and Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts) and in woven construction (Poznan Academy of Fine Arts, Poland) under Magdalena Abakanowicz. Jefferies is a pioneer in the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture and has been widely exhibited and published. Her areas of expertise lie at the intersection of arts and technology (textiles, performance, sound, and publishing).
She was one of the founding editors of Textile; The Journal of Cloth and Culture and co-editor of the first Handbook of Textile Culture (with Diana Wood Conroy and Hazel Clarke) for Bloomsbury Academic, and a contributor to TEXTILE: Crafting Community in 2016.
Jefferies was co-curator of the first Hangzhou Triennial of Fibre Art in China in 2013 and an exhibitor in 2016.