Dr Jelina Haines is a Filipino-born Australian interdisciplinary textile artist, visual designer, researcher, and cultural storyteller whose life has been shaped by migration, memory, resilience, and service. Born in Leyte, Visayan Region of the Philippines, she carries an ancestry rooted in the Visayan landscapes of her childhood and shaped by the layered histories of maritime movement, colonial naming, and Indigenous survival. Her paternal lineage connects her to the native soil, craftsmanship, and warrior spirit of Leyte. At the same time, her maternal line reflects the journeys of Austronesian seafaring families, inherited names, and cultural crossings across oceans.
Raised close to the coast and later migrating to Australia in 1997, Jelina transformed displacement into a creative language of belonging. In South Australia, she found connection through weaving and built a profound 23-year partnership with Ngarrindjeri master weaver Aunty Ellen Trevorrow. That relationship deepened her understanding of textiles not simply as objects, but as living archives: vessels of knowledge, identity, memory, and intergenerational care.
As a scholar, Jelina holds a PhD in Computer Science and Technology from the Adelaide University (formerly the University of South Australia), where her research was recognised with the Michael Miller Medal – high commendation and the global ASIS&T ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award (USA). Her academic work, visual ethnography, and artistic practice converge in a powerful belief that cultural knowledge can be protected, shared, and renewed through creative practice.
Through SunRay Wearable Art, Jelina turns raw and sustainable regional fibres into sculptural garments that speak of survival, beauty, and transformation. Each piece stitches together the strength of her paternal roots, the oceanic journeys of her maternal heritage, and the lessons of cross-cultural respect learned through decades of collaboration with First Nations communities. Her works are not only wearable art; they are acts of reclamation, remembrance, and hope.
Jelina’s creative life is also inseparable from her commitment to social justice. For more than two decades, she has supported organisations including World Vision, Save the Children, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. In 2014, following the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan, she founded SunRay Literacy Charity to support children and families in Barangay Benolho and beyond. From 2014 to 2026, SunRay helped more than 1700 children through education, sports, health, arts, and community empowerment programs.
Today, Dr Jelina Haines stands at the intersection of art, ancestry, scholarship, and compassion. Her biography is a story of a girl from Leyte who crossed oceans, honoured the hands that taught her, and transformed fibre into a language of healing. Through every artwork and every act of service, she continues one clear mission: to keep the light growing through education, creativity, compassion, and empathy, wherever it is needed most.
My mission is simple and urgent: to keep the light growing through education, creativity, compassion and empathy, wherever it is needed most.