Author: jojr-roberta

Professor of craft and wellbeing at Northumbria University, UK. I co-founded the Journal of Jewellery Research with Dr Roberta Bernabei in 2017 and co-edited until 2025, now proudly supporting on the advisory board. I studied jewellery at bachelors and masters levels and undertook my PhD exploring the potential of digital jewellery, gaining my doctorate in 2007. My research and practice is situated at the intersection of craft, HCI and care – investigating how material artefacts and creative practice have potential to support personhood and sense of self across a range of complex human contexts including dementia, bereavement and mental health.

Josephine Winther is a trained goldsmith holding an MA in metalwork and jewellery from the Royal College of Arts, in London, and an artist, teacher, and mentor. Her areas of focus include art jewellery and social design, and she shares her expertise through teaching. Winther has received the Sct. Loyé Prize and first prize in the Design and Craft Biennale Copenhagen for Makers Move, a jewellery project developed with Gitte Nygaard. Jewellery reminds us of people, places, and days in our lives, gently connecting us to one another. Winther finds inspiration in the shape of the body and the spaciousness of the mind, which continually drives her to study, create, and discuss jewellery and other objects in relation to the body.

Professor Dr. Dennis Jie Sun currently serves as the dean of the College of Fashion and Design, PhD supervisor, and chair of the Academic Committee for Art and Design at Donghua University, in Shanghai. He also serves as executive committee member of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes, director of the Academic Committee of China Fashion Designers Association, and head of the Royal College of Arts Shanghai Center. He stands as one of the most influential figures in sustainable interdisciplinary fashion and design research, practice, and curation across Greater China.

Alice Rendon is an Italian art historian specialised in the history of contemporary jewellery. She holds a master’s degree (with honours) in art history from the University of Florence, with a thesis on the twentieth-century artists’ jewellery collection of Palma Bucarelli, the historic director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, in Rome. Since 2020, she has taught contemporary jewellery history at Le Arti Orafe School, in Florence, for which she co-curated Florence Jewellery Week 2022 and has served as curator of the PREZIOSA YOUNG project since 2020. She has been a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute, in Florence, since 2023.

Laura Potter is an experienced educator and materials-based practitioner with almost 30 years’ experience working on self-directed projects and supporting students. Originally trained as a jeweller, she has expanded her material inquiry to incorporate a wide range of research methods centred on craft: the pleasures, challenges, hierarchies, and expectations of making things by hand with deliberate and considered techniques. Grounded in postdisciplinarity, her work explores themes such as identity construction through personal and domestic artefacts, the creative life of a doppelgänger, and the material culture of nuclear souvenirs.

“I am a knowledge worker for the crafts. I advocate for those who keep our craft traditions alive through creativity and skill. Culture is a preciously living entity. We are all responsible for its flourishing.”

Dr Kevin Murray is the editor of Garland Magazine. He is also coordinating editor of the Online Encyclopedia of Crafts in the Asia Pacific Region and the Encyclopedia of Crafts in Latin America (the next volume about African crafts is in development). He is co-founder of the Knowledge House for Craft , Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT University and International Adviser for the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2023. In 2000-2007 he was Director of Craft Victoria where he developed the Scarf Festival and the South Project, a four-year program of exchange involving Melbourne, Wellington, Santiago and Johannesburg. He has curated many exhibitions, including ‘Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions’; ‘Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent’; and ‘Seven Sisters: Fibre Works from the West’. His books include Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious (Thames & Hudson, 2005) and with Damian Skinner, Place and Adornment: A History of Contemporary Jewellery in Australia and New Zealand (Bateman, 2014). He was Vice-President World Crafts Council – International (2019-2025).