CTR TexLab: Interdisciplinary hub for the study of past cloth cultures

The Centre for Textile Research at UCPH is building a new hub for integrated research in cloth cultures. The hub rests upon the expertise of our multi-disciplinary network of experts, spanning archaeology, textile and animal skin research, history, art history, terminology, museums, conservation, digital and natural sciences. Together, we will work at the TexLab in CTR and organise research activities, training and teaching events.

Since its inception, CTR has worked towards developing and disseminating textile research and, in the past 15 years, textile research has indeed blossomed. It now integrates many different techniques and methods, often based on the development of natural sciences such as palaeoproteomics and aDNA, or fibre and dye analyses. However, teams, infrastructures, and research agendas often remain isolated within different departments and academic fields.

CTR hopes to act as a bridge between these different partners. Such cohesion is necessary to merge cutting-edge but isolated scientific results into a larger picture, where context and interpretation are key, in order to build together global archaeological and historical narratives.

The aim of the CTR TexLab is to generate new and more integrated research results by creating a collaborative platform for the combined study of cloth cultures, digital and natural sciences, merging resources and expertise into shared research programmes and outputs.