Alexandra Emberley is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator whose practice explores subjectivity, nature, technology, and materiality through textiles, embroidery, and surface-based experimentation. Her installations draw on myth, fable, found objects, ornamentation, detritus, and personal memory to investigate material histories, embodied experience, and invisible systems

Alexandra’s current research explores the intersections of handcraft, digital craftsmanship, material intelligence, and emerging technologies, with a focus on embodied cognition and affective computing. Informed by critical inquiry into embodiment, life writing, and the posthuman, her work investigates memory, materiality, and code in the creation of interactive poetic interfaces. This research is part of a broader inquiry into theories of play and the potential for artificial agents to engage in self-motivated, curious, spontaneous behavior.

With over sixteen years of experience in post-secondary education, Alexandra has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in drawing, printmaking, interdisciplinary studio and professional development, alongside liberal studies courses in film studies, visual and material culture, craft, and creative research methodologies. As Chair of the School of Craft and Emerging Media at AUArts (2015–2018), she played a central role in establishing the institution's first graduate program, an MFA in Craft Media.

Alexandra holds an Hons BA in Philosophy and Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, a PhD from York University's Faculty of Education, and an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta. In 2017, she completed professional certification in couture embroidery at École Lesage in Paris, before earning an MFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design (2023).

Her work has been supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, and the HRM Open Projects Program, among others. Her awards include the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Graduate MFA Student Award (2012), the Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship (2012), and the Rosanne Somerson Scholarship (2022, 2023). As a Graduate Fellow in Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum (2022–2023), she co-curated the “Sensing Fashion” exhibition. Her projects have been exhibited across Canada, the US, England, Japan, Slovakia, and Scotland, and she has held residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, CAAF (Calgary), Point Pleasant Park (Halifax), and the Bentlage Cultural and Museum Centre in Germany.

FULL CV available on request.