Dr Paddy Lonergan
Senior Lecturer in Brands & Consumer Culture
I am a Consumer Researcher and Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. With over ten years of teaching across the spectrum of marketing related subjects, I have come to specialise in delivering perspectives on brands and consumer culture, as well as critical approaches to marketing as a cultural belief system and the subsequent impact/influence on wider society. Informed by my engagement with more-than-representational research, I have begun to emphasise the ‘experiential’ in both my delivery strategy and unit briefs, encouraging students to embrace alternative views, ideas and methodologies to enhance the potential for marketing education and practice.
Academic and professional qualifications
- Fellow: The Higher Education Authority 2017
- PhD Fashion, Consumption & Affect: University of Limerick 2015
- Spec. Diploma Teaching Learning & Scholarship: University of Limerick 2014
- MSc Marketing, Consumption & Society: University of Limerick 2011
- BA Economics & Sociology: University of Limerick 2009
Previous Employment
Nottingham Trent University, 2015-2019
University College Cork, 2016-2017
Prizes and awards
I have consistently scored highly in official teaching evaluations, with students referencing my motivational, relatable and inclusive style of delivery and assessment as effective. This culminated in being shortlisted for the MMU Teacher of the Year Award in 2023 from 740 nominated colleagues, and my specialist unit, Brands & Consumer Culture being ranked #1 in the Department for student satisfaction for a second year, and a second unit, Marketing & Society, #4.
Academic service (administration and management)
Over the course of my career, I have also engaged in various administrative duties. Some of my main responsibilities have surrounded curriculum development, having written and developed two new Marketing programmes at UG and PGT level in 21/22, the latter for which I served as Programme Leader for a year. The UG programme has attracted 150 students in its first year and the PGT 34. Presently, these numbers have increased by 13% and 25% respectively. A regular reviewer for journals such as Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Fashion Marketing & Management, Journal of Marketing Management, I have also chaired and examined doctoral research vivas at MMU. Since June 2023, I have also held the position of PGR Strategy Lead, helping the University further develop and increase its PGR student numbers as part of a wider strategic plan.
Undergraduate teaching
Over the course of my career at MMU, I have developed a new UG Programme in Fashion Marketing and regulalry contribute as unit tutor across a variety of fashion and marketing related units. Most recently, I have acted as supervisor for a number of final year dissertations, all of which have conducted innovative research methodologies into areas related to fashion, branding and culture.
Postgraduate teaching
I am unit leader of an innovative unit called Brands & Consumer Culture. This exposes students to the concepts and theories of branding and the relationship between brands, consumers and culture. It focuses on brands’ marketing and design related strategies to communicate and connect with consumers within mainstream and niche cultures. This unit progresses students understanding of brands not just as symbols of meaning, but also as expressions of culture that have come to take the form of multi-sensory, “living” things.
As unit leader for Marketing & Society, I developed a live brief and subsequent funding bid focused on the experiential future of cities. Against a backdrop of social and economic fragility, the brief begins with students choosing an abandoned building in the city of Manchester, and researching its cultural history. Throughout the unit, students apply alternative marketing philosophies and methodologies to reimagine and conceptually redevelop their abandoned building, to enhance the social realities and experiences of communities in that particular area. The original solutions proposed are exhibited at a cultural institution in the city before being pitched to respective parties and local government.
External examiner roles
External Examiner for BA Fashion Marketing, University of Southampton.
Postgraduate research supervision
In Progress
As a multi-disciplinary researcher, I am interested in and capable of supervising a range of studies across a range of disciplines. Below are my current supervisee PhD thesis titles.
Thesis Title: “How Might Existing and Developing Methodologies Associated with Meta-Modernism Be Expanded upon to Further New Approaches to Collage?” (2nd Supervisor)
Thesis Title: “Retail and marketing strategies of successful Asian family Fashion businesses in NW England”.
Research
Research Interests
As a multi-disciplinary researcher, I am interesting in producing a wide variety of different research outputs and experiment with more innovative methods as my career progresses. Through domestic and international collaborations, I have published work in high ranking and prestigious journals, as well as written a number of case studies that are currently used on various curriculums in the UK. Currently, my research interest and activity is divided between two projects. As an academic interested in ‘more-than- representational’ research, I am one of the main academics to introduce and expand the methodological concept of ‘onflow’ to consumer research. This methodological practice and the ideas underpinning it aim to enrich how we think about, research and most importantly, how we present our research on experiences and experiential consumption. I am also interested in my research producing a tangible impact on students and society and as such, am under contract to develop an innovative case-based monograph which will incorporate digital and experiential methods of delivery, underpinned by learning outcomes that attempt to progress marketing education and practice forward to keep pace with the evolving relationship between brands and culture.
Currently working on:
“Accounting for Onflow in Tourist Experiences of the City”, with Dr Maurice Patterson (University of Limerick). Under Review at Annals of Tourism Research”. In this research we account for the intensities that flow through and around consumer experiences of tourism spaces. Researchers have heretofore tended to treat tourism experiences as circumscribed; separated and cut off from from the messy unfolding of everyday life that surrounds them. In this work, we acknowledge the openness and permeability of experience, appreciate onflow in this context as the constant unfolding of tourism experience as one experience bleeds into the next, and attempt to articulate more quotidian moments of tourism encounter.
“Brands Hallelujah! Critical Cases of Brand Culture”. This book presents a nuanced exploration of brands and subsequently, branding as a creative and cultural process, through a variety of innovative case studies.
Academic collaborations
In partnership with the MA Interior Design and Manchester City Council, a proposal was submitted to Leverhulme Small Research Grants to develop work first established on the Marketing & Society PGT unit.
Invited Papers
- Lonergan, P., M. Patterson and M. Lichrou (2023) “Onflow, Experience and the Sensuous City”, Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Lund, 27th - 30th June.
- Lonergan, P., M. Patterson and M. Lichrou (2017) “Inspired Dreams: Fashion Consumers and the Experience of Resonance” 9th Workshop on Interpretive Consumer Research, Stockholm, 27th - 28th April.
- Lonergan, P. (2017) “A Girl Named Kate: Exploring the Enchantment of Aesthetic Experiences”, Consumer Culture Theory Conference, University of California Irvine, 9-12 July.
- Lonergan, P., M.Lichrou and M.Patterson (2016 )“Beyond Magic: A Non-Representational Approach to Understanding Aesthetic Consumption”, Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, Newcastle, 4th - 7th July.
- Lonergan, P., (2015) “The Personification of a Dream: Cultural Intermediaries and the Mobilisation of Affect”, Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, Limerick, 7th-9th July (nominated for best paper in CCT track).
- Lonergan, P., Patterson, M. & Lichrou, M. (2013) “Gladiators: Fashion Models & the Production of Affective Intensity in the Consumer Culture Arena”, Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, Cardiff, 8th - 11th July.
- Lonergan, P., (2012) “Consuming and Producing Bodies: Cultural Labour in Fashion Modelling”, Academy of Marketing Doctoral Colloquium, Southampton, 5th-8th July.
- Lonergan, P., Patterson, M. & Lichrou,M (2012) “Consuming and Producing Bodies: Aesthetic & Affective Labour in the Male Modeling Industry”, Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, Southampton,5th -8th July.
Invited Discussions
Feb 2024: Experiential Pedagogy: Incorporating a more-than-representational research agenda into teaching. Nottingham Trent University.
May 2022: Economics & the Soul: The Tricky Relationship between Consumerism & Sustainability, Nottingham Trent University.
April 2016: Nothing is Real: A Non-Representational Exploration of Existential Authenticity, University of Liverpool.
June 2015: Arbiters of Taste in an Ephemeral Fashion Culture, Nottingham Trent University. March 2015: Telling Credible Research Stories, Nottingham Trent University.
November 2014: The Curse of Aesthetic Labour, University of Limerick.
Expert reviewer for journals and publishers
A regular reviewer for journals such as Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Fashion Marketing & Management, Journal of Marketing Management, I have also chaired and examined doctoral research vivas at MMU.
Grants
2023: UCRKE Funding of £2,500. Acquired to organise and lead an inter-disciplinary panel event in January on the subject of “Consumerism, Sustainability and a De-Growth Agenda”.
2011: Kemmy Business School Research Scholarship, University of Limerick- €8,000 funding spread over 4 years.
2011: Fashion Brands as Cultural Intermediaries: The Mobilisation of Affect, with Dr. Maurice Patterson, University of Limerick- €4,000 seed funding.
Book Chapters
Lonergan, P., 2020. 'Co-creative storytelling'. In Communicating Fashion Brands: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives, pp. 110-121.
Lonergan, P., 2020. 'The Art of Commerce: Did Morris & Co. abandon or adapt the artist’s ideologies in collaborating with fast fashion chameleon H&M?'. In, Bloomsbury Fashion Business Cases.
Lonergan, P., 2020. 'Co-Creative Storytelling: A Case Study of Warby Parker'. In Communicating Fashion Brands: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives.
Internet Publications
Lonergan, P., 2024. 'The Search for God in Vogue', https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/patrick-lonergan/the-search-for-god-in-vogue_b_8263594.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-blogs&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGQjcauYva631wczrZ9OqLSxlTonWhomciw1Cuvgjwxp0dSPXyNDibuVNkeoFMr3w2dLVVEof-kXGTu3Xpaiefh5T3C9ly9T2MGOBZhklHi6Edys1OdFH80SEslxNZ_7PrdyLoI7-tu8Biq1pcnd_CXrpGFbkwWmXNJApBOAu72b.
Lonergan, P., 2018. 'Estrella Damm: How Spanish Beer Took on Heineken to Brand Itself the Cosmopolitan Choice', https://theconversation.com/estrella-damm-how-spanish-beer-took-on-heineken-to-brand-itself-as-the-cosmopolitan-choice-97482.
Journal Articles
Huggard, E., Lonergan, P., Overdiek, A., 2023. 'New Luxury Ideologies: A Shift From Building Cultural to Social Capital', Fashion Theory, 27 (4), pp. 555-579.
Lonergan, P., 2022. 'Recalling forgotten principles: A cultural reading of fashion, death and sacredness', Fashion, Style and Popular Culture, pp. 1-20.
Lonergan, P., Patterson, M., Lichrou, M., 2022. 'Onflow and consumption: affect and first encounters', Marketing Theory: an international review, 22 (4), pp. 623-641.
Lonergan, P.P., Patterson, M., Lichrou, M., 2018. 'More than clothes hangers: cultural intermediaries in the field of fashion', European Journal of Marketing, 52 (9/10), pp. 2052-2074.
Office Location
Room C2.24
Cavendish South
Manchester Fashion Institute
Manchester Metropolitan University
Cavendish Street
Manchester M15 6BG
Office Hours
Wednesday 1pm-3pm (Appointment only)