Mission

The CTR will address highly relevant issues in contemporary textile research, including research strategies and methods.

The six major missions are:

1. To bridge the methodological gap between Northern European scientific and experimental research in textiles and tools, and Southern European historical, iconographical and epigraphic approaches. This gap lies behind our different terminologies, methods, sources and interpretations. The discrepancy between the North European tool-and-technique method and the South European historical method actually determines the framework of all textile research around the world. The CTR will bridge the gap by conducting seminars, writing joint publications, and collaborating closely with scholars from both scientific traditions. The research activities and courses for young scientists will bridge the gap for coming generations.
2. To unify the scattered research in textiles carried out at many institutions, both within and outside universities and museums. The CTR will challenge this situation - without ignoring the fact that the atomised character of textile research also comprises an inspiring and fertile aspect of the field. There is, however, a need to combine and connect the milieus, in order to facilitate more systematic and internationally-based research. The CTR is engaged in partnership with several institutions, and collaborates with a wide range of international and regional partners at all academic levels. The CTR will also provide services such as manuals, a website and a newsletter, in order to facilitate contact and exchange between textile scholars.
3. To challenge the traditional picture of early technological development. Traditionally, the origin of textile production is linked with the introduction of agriculture and the domestication of animals. Today we know that textile technology developed far earlier than agriculture, and even before ceramics. This knowledge, however, is not embedded in our cultural history. The CTR will establish a place for textile history within our cultural history. The publication and use of new textbooks for teaching at university level will help to establish this position. 
4. To challenge the peripheral position of textile research in such areas as military, maritime, agricultural and industrial history and archaeology. Textiles are normally associated with women, and textile research is mainly performed by women. It is our ambition to achieve new results in fields of cultural history in which women scholars have traditionally been less represented, and in which textiles as objects of study or as sources are largely absent. Our colleagues at the Saxo Institute have invited us to organise seminars in which common topics will be studied jointly. The strategy is to insert textile sessions into all major international conferences on archaeology and history.  In addition, a think-tank will advise the CTR on ways of profiling the centre and textile research.
5. To conceptualise textile studies. The CTR will follow up on recent contributions from the fields of anthropology and ethnology to the analysis of clothing. In particular, the CTR will concentrate on the cognitive aspects of textile production, from the early shift from leather to textile, to modern, identity-shaping clothing. There is a worldwide mythology connected with spinning; what effect did the introduction of the first binary system, the web, have on our perception of space, objects, habitation and dress? How did early textile technology influence the development of later technologies such as pottery and metallurgy? These issues will be shared with European and Scandinavian ethnologists, archaeologists, designers and historians, and will be explored at courses at the Danish design schools.
6. To connect textile research to modern textile industry and design. We share knowledge with textile craftsmanship and design, and we believe in the potential and mutual benefit inherent in textile research and industrial applications, both on the practical and theoretical level. These efforts are guided by the presence of a representative of the contemporary Danish textile industry in the CTR think-tank, as well as by our collaboration with the Danish School of Design, student exchanges with the Danish School of Design, and seminars by modern designers at the CTR. The PhD grant for design in the Danish textile industry from 1950 until the present day brings various textile companies into close contact with the CTR.