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Of Microscopes and Microskirts

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From the LAHRI Team
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LAHRI Director, Professor James Stark, reflects on the physical surroundings of the Institute and its proximity to cutting-edge interdisciplinary research.

Surroundings matter.

It certainly matters to me that LAHRI is based in the wonderful Clothworkers South Building. As well as office space on the ground floor for our team there is also a large shared space for the exclusive use of our community of Postdoctoral Fellows and two seminar rooms on the top floor, with expansive views across the top of the opposite Students Union towards the city of Leeds. Apart from our neighbours on the ground floor - the Cultural Institute and Centre for Cultural Value - much of the rest of the building is occupied by the School of Design.

Of all the nine constituent Schools in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures, the School of Design arguably spans the greatest disciplinary range. This includes practice-led researchers creating sculpture, fashion designers, textile technologists and innovators, colour chemists, visual and graphic designers and more. The floor in Clothworkers South is a striking example of creative design and innovation intersecting: the angular and colourful layout is immediately arresting, while the manufacturers of the flooring - Amtico - position themselves as designers and innovators in equal measure.

This provides us in LAHRI with inspiration for thinking creatively about how disciplines can interact and to what ends. In the case of design, not only to enrich our academic perspectives and produce new knowledge, but to respond to some of the most pressing practical issues facing sectors such as the fashion industry: sustainability, inclusive design and fashion, novel materials and their uptake, smart fashion and wearable technologies, and ethical manufacturing.

That the School of Design encompasses academic staff and students across such diverse areas is exciting. But it is also reflected in the fabric of the building. In the basement floor, for example, two near-adjacent doors reflect the breadth of disciplines. If you descend the stairs from the main entrance and turn left then the first door you encounter is marked "Electron Microscopy Lab". If you were to double back, barely three yards along you would find another labelled "Ladies' Costume Store". A glimpse further along to the end of the corridor reveals racks of colourful clothing, but if you were to look up you would see sets of ominous parallel pipes, servicing precision equipment elsewhere in the building. Playfully, just inside the costume store a glitterball hangs right next to these.

I have no idea if the Electron Microscopy Lab is still used for the advertised purpose. In a sense it doesn't matter. What is certain is that both within Clothworkers South and across the University of Leeds campus there is so much dynamic interdisciplinary research already underway. Some of it involves transmission electron microscopy, some involves fashion and fabrics, and some involves both. It is a great privilege to think about what we do through LAHRI from this inspiring place, where our core mission is to initiate and incubate the development of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research across and beyond the arts and humanities.