Jane McCann

Research Fellow, University of Derby

Having established the first and only master’s programme in Performance Sportswear Design at the University of Derby in 1995, Jane McCann has made an outstanding contribution to the development of the field.
 
McCann has gained an international reputation as a leading authority on the subject of performance sportswear in the world of education. As a teacher, McCann established an academic community that broke down the barriers between the subject areas of design and science, particularly between textiles, fashion, graphic and product design, and those in the sphere of human physiology, information technology, contextual studies and marketing. This multi disciplinary approach has opened the doors to new developments in the traditional fields of textiles and fashion design in the UK, Europe and China. The results of such work, driven largely by technological innovation, have found a much wider application, taking her studies into the fields of sustainable design, protective and corporate clothing, intelligent clothes and clothes for the third age group.  
 
As director of the Smart Clothes and Wearable Technologies (SCWT) Research Centre (2004 - 2012) at the University of Wales, Newport (now the University of South Wales) McCann attracted Joint UK Research Council funding, under the New Dynamics of Ageing programme, to lead “Design for Ageing Well” (2009–2012) with the focus on the development of a Smart sports layering system for the active ageing to enhance autonomy and wellbeing. Within this design-led, cross-disciplinary research project, McCann introduced collaborative design process, with an end-user group at the core, and researchers that included PhD students within the partner teams (that embraced electronics, functional textiles and clothing, and care of the ageing) from the universities of Ulster, Salford, Westminster and Newport, with the additional support of international industry experts.
 
McCann continues to teach short courses in China on functional clothing and contributes to textile oriented magazines and publications. Now based back home in Northern Ireland, McCann is involved in exhibition curation. Her current interest is in the application of linen and flax fibres in composite materials, emerging in sectors such as furniture and sports equipment. While making a major contribution to the staging of the Northern Ireland Linen Biennale, 2018, McCann is also actively involved in responding to industry demands for reviving performance sportswear design studies at postgraduate level, now proposed at Sheffield Hallam University.

Jane McCann

University of Derby

Sir Misha Black Award

2004