Dr Seher Mirza

Seher studied BA Textile Design at Central Saint Martins and specialises in weave. She is a member of the Art Workers Guild, London. She is also a core team member and editor (Textiles, Fashion and Craft), for The Karachi Collective, a digital platform aspiring to stimulate and propel art, design and cultural research and documentation in Pakistan and the South Asian region. She has worked in the NGO sector on women's empowerment and also runs S jo – a social business, premised on critical reflection and mutual learning – which she founded through her PhD work in rural Pakistan. S jo collections have been sold at the V&A, London and Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Seher’s research interests include power and privilege in making practices where social, cultural, material and design contexts meet. Her PhD and publications relate to power narratives in making contexts especially in designer and artisan collaborations, power relations frameworks for collaborative design with craft communities, and the ‘voice’ traditional women artisans have through their craft as a subtle and non-conventional form of positive power.