An author, textile artist and academic working with histories of textile and embroidery from the Indian subcontinent. She is Professor of Textiles and former Head of Embroidery at the Manchester Metropolitan University. She has also been a consultant at the Calico Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad, since 1992. Some of her published works include Techniques of Indian Embroidery (1995), Indian embroidery techniques at the Calico Museum of Textiles: a working guide (1999), Stitches in Gujarati Embroidery (2015) and Embroidered & Stitched Textile Fragments from Kashmir in the Calico Museum of Textiles (2017).