Academic Research
Dr Rachel Matthews is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Fashion Institute in Manchester Metropolitan University.
Her practice as an educator is informed by her industry experience, on-going research as well as her belief in design education as a powerful driver of change. Rachel's research is concerned with narratives of influence in fashion. Beginning with investigations into fashion taste-making in her PhD, she now investigates the dynamics of change-making to advance sustainable behaviour change across design and consumption.
Rachel’s pedagogical approach is informed by her insights on change, promoting fashion education as a leverage point capable of opening new directions and possibilities. Through enacting pedagogies of kindness and critical optimism, she has developed courses and fostered faculties with a culture that supports students and staff to challenge the status quo in pursuit of a better future. She is a member of the Union of Concerned Fashion Researchers and a Senior Fellow: Higher Education Academy.
Published work
2020 ↗Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 11(1), 73–100.
2019 ↗Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century
Special Issue of Arts: Changing Pedagogies in the Art College Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Arts 2019, 8(1), 24;
2018 ↗Taste-making in Turbulent Times: The Social Networks of Vogue Studies
Communication Sciences, 18(2), 399–410
2021‘Entrepreneurship and Fashion Law’ in L Davis Burns (ed) Fashion Business Cases: A Student Guide to Learning with Case Studies, Bloomsbury London.
2018 ↗Who Owns Genuine Ugg/UGG® Boots in the Global Footwear Marketplace?
Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic
2018 ↗Sneakerboy: Giving Luxury Retail a Digital Up-Grade
Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury Fashion Central
2016 ↗Fairytales and Fashion Criticism
2015Contemporary Fashion Tastemakers: Starting Conversations that Matter
Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion Beauty and Style, 4, 1 (2015): 51-70
2006 ↗Exploring the development of discipline-specific language skills with increasingly diverse art and design student group
Advance HE (Higher Education Academy Archive)
2024 ‘Whats in your wardrobe? Kindness in assessment design’, in A Grant & S Pittaway (eds) Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness: A guide for practitioners in higher education, Routledge, Abingdon.
Rachel Matthews (2019) Measures of Influence visible from social media accounts (after Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence) presented at International Conference on Communication and Media Studies – Media Data & Society (at UCL London 10-11 August 2019)
Rachel Matthews (2020) Discourse-Assemblage: Australian Media Sources, 2018. Collage created during the discourse analysis process, published in Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
Rachel Matthews (2020) Discourse-Assemblage: International Fashion Media Sources, 2018. Collage created during the discourse analysis process, published in Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
Rachel Matthews (2018) Network mapping and visualisation: British Vogue May 1967 and May 2017, published in Studies in Communication Sciences 18.2 (2018), pp. 399–410
Timeline & Convergence — Rachel Matthews (2018). Teaching Resource published in Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century.
PhD Collage — Rachel Matthews (2016) A Tastemaker’s Assemblage: The Convergence. Unpublished PhD project research
Research platforms
Emporium
Fashion and Textile research seminar group
Research Gate
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Academia
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