Rachel Homewood

Rachel Homewood is a Programme Lead (Art and Design) and Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, within the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries and School of Architecture, Art and Design. Her career began in 2006 as a fashion educator at Southampton Solent University, transitioning to full-time academia in 2010. Prior to this, she held a Senior Fashion Designer role in the industry, which informed her leadership and curriculum development strategies.

Her research focuses on integrating digital technologies into fashion and textile education, including virtual reality (VR) tools like Google Tilt Brush and Unreal Engine, as well as photogrammetry and 360 volumetric film. Collaborations with cross-faculty teams produced award-recognized immersive fashion films showcased at events like Graduate Fashion Week.

As Course Leader (2017–2023) and Academic Lead in Design, she managed curriculum alignment with industry standards, international partnerships, and student recruitment. She aims to create a digital repository of student work using AR/VR and to collaborate with museums to digitize textile collections for educational use.