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
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Finding Sustainable Strategies for Fashion Communication through Digital Channels
2025 (forthcoming)
A Muhammad Sayem (ed) Digital Fashion & Sustainability, The Textile Institute Book series for Elsevier, Oxford.
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Wearing and sharing #wardrobechallenges: Finding inspiration when you have nothing to wear
2025
6th PLATE Conference, Aalborg University, Denmark.
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Future of Sustainable Fashion Communications: From Marketing Messages to the Mediation of Mutable Meanings
2024
A Grant & S Pittaway (eds) Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness: A guide for practitioners in higher education, Routledge, Abingdon
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What’s in your wardrobe? Kindness in assessment design
2024
A Grant & S Pittaway (eds) Enacting a Pedagogy of Kindness: A guide for practitioners in higher education, Routledge, Abingdon
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Entrepreneurship and Fashion Law’ in L Davis Burns (ed) Fashion Business Cases: A Student Guide to Learning with Case Studies
2021
Bloomsbury London.
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Contemporary Fashion Tastemakers: Starting Conversations that Matter
2021
Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion Beauty and Style, 4, 1 (2015): 51-70
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Understanding ugg boots: Travels through place, space and time
2020
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Redrawing the Timeline: Teaching the History of Fashion in the Networked Conditions of the Twenty-First Century
2019
Special Issue of Arts: Changing Pedagogies in the Art College Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (Arts 2019, 8(1), 24;
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Sneakerboy: Giving Luxury Retail a Digital Up-Grade
2018
Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury Fashion Central
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Who Owns Genuine Ugg/UGG® Boots in the Global Footwear Marketplace?
2018
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Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases. London: Bloomsbury Academic
2018
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Fairytales and Fashion Criticism
2016
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Taste-making in Turbulent Times: The Social Networks of Vogue Studies
2016
Communication Sciences, 18(2), 399–410
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Exploring the development of discipline-specific language skills with increasingly diverse art and design student group
2006
Advance HE (Higher Education Academy Archive)
Transmedia story of #harrystylescardigan phenomenon (2024). This tracks the spread of the Harry Styles cardigan challenge from TikTok through articles in the New York Times, from radio to museums, with each channel adding to the narrative. Presented at Digital Fashion Innovation Conference (2024), Manchester Metropolitan University and in ‘Finding Sustainable Strategies for Fashion Communication through Digital Channels’, in Digital Fashion & Sustainability (forthcoming).
Mapping materials in sustainable fashion marketing (2023). Three case study analyses of brands Ganni, Bode and A.BCH, each showing the different mediation of sustainability through materials in marketing messages. Published in: Future of Sustainable Fashion Communications: From Marketing Messages to the Mediation of Mutable Meanings’ in Mediating Sustainability in the Consumer Society (2024)
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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