Susan Postlethwaite

Susan Postlethwaite is Professor of Fashion Technologies at the Manchester Fashion Institute and Director of the Robotics Living Lab (RoLL). She is an alumna of the prestigious Policy Fellowship programme at the Royal Academy of Engineering and was co-investigator for AHRC funded Creative Clusters Future Fashion Factory: Digitally Enabled Design & Manufacture of Designer Products for Circular Economies. Susan is an industry expert for N+ Back to Baselines NERC Funded. Scientifically Validated Environmental and Design Baselines Standards and Principles.

She is also a member of AHRC Peer Review College and was a panel member for REF 2021, Panel D, Sub-panel 32. Following a fashion design career working for Ralph Lauren and Georgio Armani, Susan was Director of the Fashion Futures Masters Programme at London College of Fashion and Senior Research Fellow Fashion Programme at the Royal College of Art where she won £3 million for the Burberry Material Futures Research Group. Her research interests include new robotic and co-botic technologies and automation in manufacturing, micro factories, reshoring of the UK fashion design/manufacturing sector which includes focusing on Industry 4.0+ and 5.0 economic theory, policy inclusion, and circular economy agendas engaging with regional and central government. She has a long-term collaboration with the Manufacturing Technology Centre as part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult.