The human cornea is the window to the eye, and acts to focus light onto the retina. It is composed of three main layers: a stratified epithelium, the stroma, and a monolayer of endothelial cells. Corneal opacities are the 4th leading cause of blindness worldwide, with the main current treatment being a tissue transplant from a cadaveric donor. This treatment method has several limitations, which has prompted researchers into finding suitable synthetic alternatives, with very few making it through to clinical trials thus far. Cast hydrogels based on the natural polymer poly-ε-lysine have been investigated in our group for multiple ocular applications including antimicrobial contact lenses to treat keratitis, and an endothelial cell delivery device to treat damaged corneal endothelium. These studies found that hydrogels based on pεK were found to have tuneable mechanical properties, a high transparency and water content and supported the cell attachment and growth of several corneal cell types. However, the cast hydrogels do not demonstrate an interconnected porosity, a property which would expand the tissue engineering applications for which the hydrogels would be suitable. This work investigated various manufacturing methods to produce a porous hydrogel construct based on poly-ε-lysine, including; fragmenting the hydrogels during polymerisation, the use of a porogen and 3D reactive inkjet printing. The various hydrogels were characterised for their optical, physical and mechanical properties and their compatibility with corneal cell types. Corneal cells were also seeded onto alternative peptide based hydrogels, including methacrylated gelatin (GelMA) and methacrylated poly-ε-lysine (pεKMA). The results demonstrate that a poly-ε-lysine construct with interconnected porosity can be manufactured when the hydrogel is fragmented during polymerisation. These hydrogel variants demonstrate handleable mechanical properties, a high transparency and support the attachment of corneal epithelial and endothelial cells and the inward migration of corneal stromal cells. Hydrogel variants cast using a porogen demonstrated similar physical properties, however altering the chemistry of these hydrogels dramatically reduced the transparency, rendering them unsuitable for a corneal application. However, the porosity, high strength, water content and cyto-compatibility suggests they could be considered for alternative tissue engineering applications. Finally, this work has shown it is possible to print porous hydrogel constructs based on the polymers poly-ε-lysine and gellan gum using 3D reactive inkjet printing. These printed structures had a unique surface topography due to the instantaneous reaction between the polymers of opposing charges. This structure can be tailored to include pores throughout, and demonstrates a high resolution. This work presents the versatility of manufacture of pεK hydrogels, and their potential as corneal tissue engineering constructs. They demonstrate comparable properties to alternative hydrogels used in tissue engineering applications, and are also comparable with native human tissue.