Academic Biography: Rebecca J. Keyel is a Design and Textile Historian and a Folklorist. She holds a PhD and MS in Human Ecology (Design Studies) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison a BA from Wellesley College. Her research interests include material culture, textile and knitting history, folklore, and home craft. Her research focuses on ordinary people making things for a higher cause, and the way making satisfies a personal need to create. Her dissertation examined American women’s hand knitting for servicemen during the First and Second World Wars and its relationship with labor, patriotism, and the zeitgeist of the homefront through archival research and reconstruction knitting.
Information Technology Biography: Becca Keyel is an Instructional Technologist at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts where she supports educational technology for students, faculty, and staff. She has worked in and around higher ed technology for most of her career.
Less Academic Biography: Rebecca is a knitter and spinner, a technology and media geek, a design and textile historian, and a hobby photographer.