About Our Research
Our research centres on the physical and physiological interface between humans and textiles, and the complex issues that arise when textiles are worn against the human body. We seek to advance understanding of how textiles perform when being worn and used by people. As human ecologists, our research is not restricted to the laboratory. It often involves carrying out wear trials in field conditions in order to examine the interactions between human subjects and their clothing in real life conditions. Our current and future research is focused on three main areas related to textiles: (i) odour within textiles; (ii) performance of textiles relating to thermophysiological aspects of clothing comfort and protection; and (iii) sustainability of textiles
Group News
May 2022
- Our article related to UofA students and their clothing repair behaviours has been published in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology & Education. Email us at textile@ualberta.ca if you're interested in a free e-print of the article.
January 2022
- Skylar Brown successfully defended her MSc thesis on January 25th. Congratulations Skylar!
September 2021
- Welcome new graduate students: Jen Beaudette who is beginning her PhD and Anil Kumar who is beginning his MSc.
April 2021
- Congratulations Lauren Degenstein for successfully defending her MSc thesis on April 27th.
March 2021
- Congratulations to Ayesha Jain for successfully completing her Masters. Her capstone project was on "Influence of consumption behaviours, attitudes and barriers toward clothing repair".
- Lauren's research about textile waste within Edmonton has now been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production. You can view the article for free until April 24th, 2021: "What goes where'? Characterizing Edmonton's municipal clothing waste stream and consumer clothing disposal".
November 2020
- Our article "Exploring the connection between odour and clothing disposal" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of the Textile Institute.
October 2020
- The article "Smell and sustainability: Can odour shorten the life span of clothing?" has been published in the edited book Transitioning to Sustainability: Transitioning to Responsible Consumption and Production. Great to see this published!
July 2020
- Check out the article published on the UofA Folio related to Mukhtar's MSc research "Research reveals why it's hard to get the smell out of polyester"