معرفی
Dr. Beverly Ayling-Smith serves as an Associate Research Fellow at the University for the Creative Arts within the School of Crafts and Design and International Textile Research Centre. She concurrently holds an Associate lecturer position on the MA Textiles course where she leads the Theory and Analysis Unit, bridging academic instruction with innovative textile research focused on grief, loss, and material memory.
Her educational foundation includes a First Class Honours degree from Middlesex University, an MA with Distinction in Contemporary Craft from UCA Farnham, and a PhD jointly awarded by UCA Farnham and the University of Brighton. Her doctoral research 'The space between mourning and melancholia' established her signature approach to materializing psychological states through textile processes.
Ayling-Smith's research investigates cloth as metaphor for emotional experiences, using linen, bedsheets, and stitch-based interventions like tearing and mending to manifest grief and memory. Her work connects viewer emotions through affective textile encounters, exploring how unresolved mourning stains emotional states across time. International conference presentations at venues including University of Leeds, Lisbon, and Budapest demonstrate her cross-disciplinary impact in bereavement studies and trauma theory.
Analysis of her 2013-2021 publications reveals consistent thematic evolution from domestic textile objects (bedsheets) to emotional barriers, maintaining focus on cloth's capacity to materialize psychological states. Her writing spans peer-reviewed journals like TEXTILE, exhibition catalogues, and edited volumes, emphasizing material authenticity and viewer catharsis.
Dr. Ayling-Smith has not received documented scientific awards or honors according to her academic profile.
She currently supervises PhD candidates Mona Craven (third supervisor) and LouLou Morris (second supervisor) at UCA. Research funding includes two grants from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (2015, 2021) supporting cross-cultural projects exploring textile art in grief contexts, particularly Japanese-British collaborations on mourning practices.
Based at UCA's Farnham campus, Ayling-Smith actively contributes to the International Textile Research Centre's scholarly community through her studio practice documented at beverlyaylingsmith.com and collaborative platform transitionandinfluence.com, where she examines cultural transitions in textile memory practices.
