Professor Catherine Harper has held senior academic leadership positions at large multi-faculty and specialist institutions. Daughter of teachers, educated in both textile design and automotive composite engineering to doctoral level in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, she is motivated by education for social transformation, cross-cultural understanding, justice and tolerance, as well as the pursuit and application of knowledge that makes a real and lasting difference to the world in which we live. She is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Educational & Social Equity.

Professor of Textiles since 2011, Catherine was awarded the title of Chair Professor of Design and the Catherine Harper Textile Lab established at Woxsen University, Hyderabad, India in 2022. She is Acting Provost and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Academic Partnerships) at The British University in Egypt, Cairo.

Catherine Harper has served as Editor-in-Chief, TEXTILE: Cloth & Culture, a Taylor & Francis academic journal, since 2004, and her most recent publications include two essays (The Red Hand/s (Lámh Dhearg) of Ulster and other bloody Irish flags… and Bloody Textiles, Bloody Sunday, Bloody Ireland for the multi-volume Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of World Textiles (2025) and a book, The Stained and Bloodied Cloths of Ireland (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

As a visual artist, Catherine Harper has exhibited in Europe, North America, Australasia and the Middle East, and her work is held in many private and public collections, most recently being acquired by the Seamus Heaney Home Place, Bellaghy, Ireland.

Reader in Fashion Marketing, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University

  Dr. Patsy Perry is a Reader in Fashion Marketing in Manchester Fashion Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Her PhD focused on the management of Corporate Social Responsibility in global fashion supply chains with fieldwork was conducted in Sri Lanka. She has published her research on fashion supply chains, sustainability, and luxury marketing in academic journals and textbooks, and presented at international conferences. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. Her expertise on fashion sustainability has been featured widely in the national print and broadcast media as well as internationally, including BBC Breakfast, Channel 4, Sky News, TRT World, BBC Radio, Voice of Islam radio, The Independent, The Guardian, The Observer, The Telegraph, Financial Times, BBC Newsbeat, UN Environment, South China Morning Post, PBS, CNN, CTGN, Vogue Business, Drapers, Harpers Bazaar, National Geographic. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been invited to teach internationally in China (Wuhan, Zhengzhou), Italy (Milan), Sweden (Boras), Croatia (Zagreb), The Netherlands (Amsterdam) and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai and Fujairah).

Dr. Kaustav SenGupta is a distinguished futurist, color behaviourist, academician, and Gen AI expert, currently serving as an Associate Professor and Link Chairperson at National Institute of Fashion Technology. With over 25 years of experience, Dr. SenGupta has provided strategic foresights and trend consultancies  to globally renowned brands such as Nike, Nokia, Vodafone, Coca Cola, Hyundai, Kia Motors, NTT Data, Sony, Samsung, Apple, Wild Republic USA, Plan UK, Knights & Walker Dubai, Ruby Pseudo UK, Skullcandy etc. He is a member of the boards of studies for five universities and one leading college, contributing his expertise to shape the future design academia of this nation. As a jury panellist for the prestigious India Design Mark initiative by the Government of India, Dr. SenGupta has been instrumental in recognizing excellence in design. He has been in the Jury panel of Images Retail Award. A sought-after speaker, he has shared his insights at multiple TEDx conferences, ThinkEdu Conclave, Titan Youth Insights Panels, Lenovo Youth Insights Panel UK and Edelman roundtables, among others. His thought-leadership has also been featured in interviews with the BBC UK, The Hindu, Hindustan Times and other prominent media outlets, focusing on foresight and trend analysis. Dr. SenGupta, credited with multiple foresight tools and methodologies has published more than 30 articles,  multiple research papers and chapters in the books. In addition to his academic and consulting roles, Dr. SenGupta serves as the Director of VisioNxt Trend Research and AI Lab at NIFT, driving innovative perspectives in the field of fashion forecasting and AI. VisioNxt Trend Research lab is pioneering the cutting edge tech enabled foresight research with indigenous AI deeplearning model, fashion taxonomy and being mentioned by Honorable PM of India in his speech at Bharat Tex 2025. 

Dr. Francesco Mazzarella is a design researcher, educator, and activist, striving to plant seeds of hope and change, especially working with marginalised communities. He is Reader in Design for Social Change at London College of Fashion, UAL. His work at Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) aims at exploring ways in which design activism can be used to create counter-narratives towards sustainability, in and through fashion. Francesco's research spans the fields of design activism, textile craftsmanship, decolonising fashion, design for sustainability, social innovation, and place-making.

Francesco is a member of the Design Council Expert Network, Fellow of Advance HE, Co-founder of the DESIS Cluster on 'Design from the Margins' and of the Cumulus Working Group on 'Design Education for Social Change'. He has experience in design research, education, and practice in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, and Australia. Francesco's work has been presented at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.