RUTH BARNES received a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, based on her research in eastern Indonesia. Her doctoral dissertation was published as The Ikat Textiles of Lamalera. A Study of an Eastern Indonesian Weaving Tradition (Leiden, E.J. Brill 1989). She also has written numerous articles on Indonesian weaving and related art forms. Since 1990 she has worked at the Ashmolean Museum's Department of Eastern Art, cataloguing and researching Indian and Islamic textiles.

Her current research is on aspects of the pre- and early European Indian Ocean trade network; On this topic she has published Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt. The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997), as well as numerous articles. She co-authored (with Rosemary Crill and Steven Cohen) Trade, Temple and Court. Indian Textiles from the Tapi Collection (2002).