Academic Research
Dr Rachel Matthews is Programme Leader in fashion business 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 fashion 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
2025 ‘Future of sustainable fashion communications: from marketing messages to the mediation of mutable meanings’, in A. Skjerven, L. Berg, L. Nielsen & D. Stuedahl (eds) Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society, Routledge, Abingdon.
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
Check out my Google Scholar profile.
Emporium
Fashion and Textile research seminar group
Research Gate
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Academia
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