Emma Cocchiarella MA RCA FHEA

Senior Lecturer
Textiles in Practice

Emma Cocchiarella is a Textiles Educator and Designer. Having trained at Glasgow School of Art and The Royal College of Art, practice explores multi-faceted approaches to design conversations, with a creative background in Textiles for Fashion, Trends and Interiors. Emma has worked on a range of editorial, exhibition, installation, styling and art direction projects for interior concept retailers, Uk and Japanese fashion houses, brands and trend journals (View Publications, VIEWPOINT, LSN), alongside this Emma has written and researched numerous articles for Japanese Fashion journal YSH (YM Fashion). Exhibiting at the V&A in collaboration with the costume society and Swarovski and most recently at the Milan Furniture Fair 2023. Emma has worked in Higher Education since 2011 and further creative education since 2008.

With a focus on compassionate pedagogy, teaching practice encourages empathic approaches to design discourse through collaborative, inclusive and experiential learning methodologies. Exploring how design has the potential to communicate through sensory engagement along-with concepts relating to the ‘way we live with others in mind’. Ultimately addressing, how Design has the capability to impact, enrich and empower other people’s lives. In turn empowering learners to establish personal values for practice and ways of working personally, professionally and creatively in the future.

Adopting a dialogic design thinking approach, projects explore participatory, sensory and inclusive design methods, recently working collaboratively with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to consider human-centric accessible design innovation in real-world scenarios, developing emotional intelligence through prioritising values such as empathy, active listening and understanding of others’ perspectives, needs and experiences in-order to create / co-create successful design.

Through tactile exploration, creative briefs enable us to examine our connection to and fluency within textile practice. Connectivity with tacit modes of learning encourage engagement and critical discourse around the discipline.

Emma is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In her role as Senior Lecturer in Design, Emma is also the Admissions tutor, International liaison, outreach and conversion activities coordinator for the Textiles Programme, exhibitions team member and Level 4 Year Lead.

Awards & Nominations:

2025 Nominated for MMU Teaching Award ‘Outstanding Commitment to Inclusive Learning & Teaching’

2019 Staff Award: Innovative Tutor, Leeds Arts University

Membership of Professional Bodies:

Fellow of the Higher Education Authority
https://hea.ie

Member of the Arts Emergency Mentoring Body
www.arts-emergency.org

Member of RCA Alumni
https://www.rca.ac.uk/alumni/