Textiles and Technology
Photos by Dennis Mitchell, Second Glance Images
Caitrin is currently working on a project that focuses on a 150-year- old New England textile factory. The project examines questions of outsourcing, precarious labor, gender, and business competition. It will result in a book and academic articles.
The main focus of the project is research funded by the National Science Foundation, on “Textiles, Technology, and the Return of Manufacturing in the United States.” Colleagues Aaron Hoover (Mechanical Engineer) and Deb Chachra (Engineering and Materials Science) are co-investigators, and Caitrin did fieldwork in the textile mill with students in summers 2015, 2016, and 2017. This project will always be done in memory of Aaron, who, sadly, passed away in 2000.
A jointly written paper based on this research (by Caitrin and the student team) is the following:
Lynch, Caitrin and Coppola, Adam and Holmes, Andrew and Rosner, Margaret "New genres and obsolete expertise in the new textiles economy" Journal of Cultural Economy , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2022.2087719
More Information
NSF Grant
Integrating research and teaching
Lessons From a Mill