Beyond Algorithms – Creativity and the Digital Woman

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What is creativity? What is pattern? What is cutting?

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Jema Hewitt is an interdisciplinary creative practitioner and academic, focusing on pattern cutting, material culture and new technologies. After a 30-year career in costume for film, tv and theatre, she was appointed a permanent lecturer in Fashion Design at De Montfort University in 2024. Previous guest lecturer positions include an appointment to teach the 2022 BRIT exchange program at the University of South Florida, funding awarded by Cameron Mackintosh Ltd.

Technology and feminism have been a continuous thread through her career, from early science-fiction costume designs, to speaking on BBC4’s Woman’s Hour about the role of women in the retro-futurism genre Steampunk.

 

Following the completion of an MA in pattern cutting from Huddersfield University, she is now a PhD candidate at Loughborough University, receiving a scholarship from the CDT for feminism and sexual politics to examine gendered semiotics and stereotyping within the aesthetics of robots, and embodied AI.

 

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