Congratulations to Dr María José Munguía Romero who passed her PhD defence on the 14th August 2026 for a thesis entitled, “Sustainable Future Footwear and Fashion Technology.” Maria completed her PhD journey as a member of James Busfield’s Soft Matter Group in SEMS at QMUL. Her supervision team included Dr Veronika Kapsali (University of the Arts London), Li Wang (QMUL) and Keizo Akutagawa (QMUL). This was very much a multidisciplinary project tackling a huge global issue.

Maria’s examiners were Prof Kate Goldsworthy (Central Saint Martins) and Dr Sara Hajikazemi . The viva was completed in just 90 minutes with both examiners enjoying Maria’s discussion of the challenges of making sports shoes more sustainable from a designer’s perspective and the associated challenges of generating a measure of this sustainability that is much more transparent to the consumers who buy the products.

James Commented that “Maria was working on a sustainability project that was quite different research area to the other members of the Soft Matter Group. She has proven to be remarkably resourceful at building networks of people both at QMUL and more broadly who she could work with to complete this very challenging and important project. It has been a wonderful experience working with her for the last four years.”

Maria is the eighth student from James’ group to complete her PhD in the last 18 months. She has published a journal paper in Scientific Reports already on her work with another couple of papers already in the pipe line.