Summer Research Snapshot: Niamh Ni Catháin

Niamh is undertaking her PhD at Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, where she is exploring the potential of weaving as a methodology. Her research is investigating how working at the loom can generate knowledge and how weaving can bring together material, ecological, cultural and philosophical forms of understanding. Using flax and wool as important points of entry, she is interested in how making might deepen understandings of relationships between people, land, language and materials.

Her work is beginning to engage with broader discussions around decolonising design, more-than-human ethics and the knowledge embedded within craft traditions. She is particularly interested in how language might carry cultural and land memory, including Irish weaving and loom terminology. She is also beginning to explore related international research, including Diana Alberon Gonzalez's work with Mayan weavers in Mexico. This work has prompted further consideration of how weaving might act as a means of carrying and generating knowledge, and how embodied ways of knowing and relationships to land might be explored through practice.

Alongside the theoretical work, Niamh remains engaged in hands-on making. She recently visited Mallon Linen Farm in County Tyrone and has been developing connections with people involved in North Belfast flax projects with project collaborators Grow NI, Brink! and Quarto. Niamh is also processing raw flax fibre in her studio and preparing to deliver a weaving workshop at an upcoming flax festival. Her research is beginning to raise questions around the infrastructure needed to support regenerative textile systems across the island, and how growers, makers and communities might connect through local fibre resources. With fellow PhD student Louis, Niamh is contributing to conversations around the ethical considerations of the wider Co-Create project.