Molly Talbot

Profile

Background

I have been a part of the University of Leeds since 2018 and joined the School of Design in 2019. I graduated with a First Class BA (Hons) in Textile Design, specialising in woven textiles.

My final year shaped my new materialist approach to research, with a dissertation exploring how materials might be seen as co-creators in sustainable fashion practices, and design projects investigating material agency through experimental processes, working with weathering metals, living materials like bacteria, and dynamic 3D textiles. This work was supported by funding from the Society of Dyers and Colourists.

After graduating, I worked as a Research Assistant under the supervision of Caroline Hemingray and Stephen Westland on a Leeds Institute of Textiles and Colour (LITAC) development project exploring colour forecasting for virtual fashion and the metaverse.

Current Research

My LITAC-funded doctoral research focuses on visual and tactile perceptions of clothing, particularly how we perceive tactility through sight alone (visual-tactile). I am interested in how people make sense of garments through purely visual cues in digital or non-touch environments.

Key outputs include:

• The Leeds Garment Image Database, a public resource linking garment imagery and measured properties to sensory perceptions, presented at the London Imaging Meeting 2025 (Institute of Physics).
• Development of new psychophysical methods for visual-tactile perception studies, presented internationally at the Colour & Visual Computing Symposium (NTNU, Norway) and nationally at the International Textiles and Colour Conference (LITAC, University of Leeds).

During the second year of my PhD, I also worked as the School’s Weave Technician, supporting undergraduate teaching, loom maintenance, and research-led weaving projects.

Future Plans

I am interested in continuing research at the intersection of perception science, physics, material technology, and digital materiality. I am also interested in collaborative research & industry applications of new sensory knowledge.

Research interests

• Visual-tactile perception of garments and textiles.
• Psychophysics to uncover fundamental psychological and physiological mechanisms in perception.
• Sensory research in digital and virtual environments.
• Material agency in sustainable fashion.
• Predicting from, and linking, measurable material properties to sensory perceptions.

Qualifications

• First Class BA (Hons) Textile Design (Woven Textiles Specialism), University of Leeds