Nicole DeRushie is a Canadian scholar-practitioner in ancient fibre arts based in the UK. She has been a spinner for 16 years, and regularly dabbles in a wide variety of other historical crafting. Her passion is the everyday lives of ordinary people and the practical use of textiles in that context. Trained first as a medievalist and studying the connection between people and the landscape, her interests have since rocketed backwards in time. She works in museums in Oxford, and does speaking and teaching engagements on the topic of clothing in the ancient world.
A Forest School Leader and bushcrafter, she has gained an appreciation for the longevity of our most traditional knowledge and skills, in which we use the organic materials of the natural environment to meet basic needs. Through her studies and learning-by-doing, she has found evidence of profound cultural similarity and sharing, self-sufficiency and sustainable practices in the past which are more important to recall into use now than ever before.