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Tel: +44 02 7679 8631 (Dept office)
Fax: +44 20 7679 8632

E-mail: lucy.norris@ucl.ac.uk

Ph.D, Anthropology
University of London, 2003
The life-cycle of clothing in contemporary urban India: an anthropological study of recycling and the cultural perception of materials

Master of Arts (MA), Anthropology of Art
University College London, 1997

Bachelor of Arts (BA), European History and Anthropology
University of East Anglia, 1987

Publications

Publications

Recycled cloth - a new website

We are beginning to develop a website which will feature current academic research on global secondhand clothing economies, using photography and film alongside short essays. This is being funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant, and will initially focus research and photography projects in India (see below).

Recently published

Recycling Indian Clothing (book cover)

Norris, L. 2010. Recycling Indian Clothing: Global Contexts of Reuse and Value.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Recycling Textile Technologies June 14th 2010

The original call for papers can be found here.

The workshop was held as part of the ESRC-funded www.thewasteoftheworld.org project, with a contribution from the Journal of Material Culture.

Research interests

Anthropology of waste and materials, with a focus on the global economy of post-consumer clothing and textile waste; indigenous and industrial recycling technologies; material culture; craftsmanship, upcycling and sustainable design; cultural heritage. Regional focus on India including extended periods of ethnographic research in Delhi, north India and Kerala.

Current Projects (2006-2011):

I am currently working on a collaborative ESRC-funded programme, the www.thewasteoftheworld.org, where my role is to focus research upon global issues of textile waste. This has involved extensive fieldwork in both north and south India.

The project investigates two related topics:

  • The political economy of recycling grades of post-consumer clothing, ie the cast-offs that are not sold to developing economies as reusable clothing but are destroyed in order to recuperate value from the fibres. The project is based upon ethnographic research in shoddy recycling factories in Panipat, north India, and investigates local perceptions of waste, materiality and value.
  • A study of a declining handloom weaving centre in Kannur, north Kerala, that produces high quality furnishing fabrics. Both the mountains of cast-off clothing circulating the globe and the marginalisation of hand-crafted high quality domestic products can be viewed as a relative devaluation in the face of increasing over-production of cheap, low quality, high volume textiles. This fieldwork widened the scope of the waste project to include the detrius of industrial decline such as buildings and equipment, and the ensuing waste of skill and livelihood. The research looks at competing local perceptions of the potential for reviving the handloom industry, despite highly mechanized competitors, in the broader context of the political ideology of handloom in India, the local influence of communist politics and the cooperative movement, against the increasing visibility of social movements outside India advocating slow fashion, fair trade and eco-friendly products.

Completed Projects:

India Recycled: a photographic exhibition (2008-9)

Photographs by Tim Mitchell, a freelance photographer, documenting the recycling of cloth in Delhi were displayed at the Horniman Museum, London, from May 2008 to January 2009. Images include both the recycling of saris and everyday Indian clothing, and the industrial recycling of imported Western clothing. A selection of these photos can be found at this Guardian Online gallery.

This research was funded by a British Academy Small Research Grant.

Previous post-doctoral research

  • Research Fellow for SusDiv, an EU project addressing the role of art and material culture in the creation of sustainable diversity, focusing on cloth consumption by the West African market in Tower Hamlets. Sept 05-Sept 06.
  • ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow. (Nov 03 - Jan 05)
  • Research Fellow for ECHO, an EU project led by the Max Plank Society for the History of Science promoting the online access to cultural heritage (Jan - Dec 03)