I would like to thank the Trustees for their timely and generous awards. In the year following my Cambridge M Phil I returned to India and was given a second grant to conduct ethnographic research among weaving communities. This work formed a pre-PhD pilot study and I returned to Cambridge in 1996 to commence work on my PhD entitled "Crafting discourse: mat weaving in Pattamadai, South India". I was awarded the PhD in 2002.