Joanne Harris

Background

About Joanne Harris

Joanne is an artist, academic and entrepreneurship researcher. Her academic work transitions across the disciplines of surface design, textiles, Interior design, product design and fashion. She is an experienced academic whose research challenges the importance for nature inspired learning models for enhancing transpersonal and spiritual awareness in creative entrepreneurship education. Joanne has over twenty years’ experience as a Senior Lecturer working as an Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programme Leader in Surface, Fashion and Textile Design. She has won awards for her work as an entrepreneurial educator at The University of Huddersfield and has led creative venture funded research projects with stakeholders from the creative and charity sectors in the areas of medical textiles and surface design applications for architectural glass. Joannes passion to embed entrepreneurship experiences has pioneered change and new thinking approaches for establishing collaborative partnerships with industry. Through investing and engaging in real live industry projects and curating over a decade of trade show exhibitions at London’s Business Design Centres ‘Surface Design Show’ an international Trade Show for surface materials. Pioneering and co-writing the only Postgraduate Module in Creative Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the School where she continued to inspire and embed collaborative design initiatives with PG students for societal, environmental, health and wellbeing concept design entrepreneurial challenges with industry partners. This work became the inspiration for her second international conference in 2018 which she was co- organiser for. Transitions 2: Material Revolution, an environmentally focused industry and academic conference for emerging themes on Bio-inspired Design: Innovation with Nature, Enhancing Material Performance and Functionality, Digital Manufacturing for Industry 4.0 and The Circular Economy. The conference attracted presentations from leading companies across the UK and internationally, with keynotes from Jenny Sabin from Cornell University Sabin Design Lab and Professor Joan Farrer Professor of Enterprise Design and Innovation at Portsmouth University. The conference and networking informed Joanne’s doctoral research and Postgraduate Curriculum design and teaching. Joanne is currently '2021' in her writing up period of her Doctor of Enterprise a study which explores the importance of the individual from a transpersonal experiential and spiritual perspective in creative entrepreneurship education.