Global collaboration awarded in Santa Fe

TWO members of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Apparel staff picked up awards at the International Textiles and Apparel Association Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jane Ledbury, the Associate Dean for International Partnerships, and Nick Hall, Senior Lecturer in Apparel presented a joint paper with Textiles and Apparel staff from all over the world.

The joint authors of the paper were the Chair and Associate Professor of Fashion and Textile Technology, Lynn Boorady, from SUNY Buffalo State University in the USA, Karen Webster and Grant Emerson from RMIT in Australia and Dr. Bingbing Du from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in China.

The paper titled Connect: A Global Learning Experience on Sustainability in the Fashion Industry was on sustainability, with the aim of raising awareness amongst student bodies of the impact of the apparel industry on the environment. The project generated a web-based sustainability resource of academic papers, articles, videos and films, which continues to grow and is accessible to all students. The project used Problem Based Learning as the vehicle for learning and teaching and feedback from the studhttps://www2.mmu.ac.uk/hollings/department-of-apparel/our-staff/profile… was outstanding.

The awards

The first award received for the paper was the Social Responsibility Track Award for Paper of Distinction Sustainability. The second accolade was the Educators for Socially Responsible Apparel Practices Teaching Award.

Jane Ledbury said: “We were delighted to receive these top awards at this prestigious international conference. It demonstrates that our projects in international education through partnerships with Universities like Buffalo State, BIFT and RMIT are producing outstanding collaborative research initiatives that are really paying off.”

The International Textiles and Apparel Association is a professional, educational association composed of scholars, educators, and students in the textile, apparel, and merchandising disciplines in higher education. The Association promotes the discovery, dissemination, and application of knowledge and is a primary resource for its members in strengthening leadership and service to society.