Elizabeth is Senior Lecturer in Dress and Belonging at Manchester Fashion Institute. Originally from the States, she worked in printing and publishing in NYC before settling in Manchester, UK.  Elizabeth lectures across fashion studies subjects including critical theory, brand development, marketing principals, and graphic communication practice for fashion. She is Associate Editor of the journal Fashion, Style and Popular Culture, an imprint of Intellect Books.

Elizabeth’s research is multidisciplinary in nature. She seeks connections between cultural memory, autoethnography, human geography, dress, identity, disability, belonging and wellness. She co-organised and co-led the January 2021 international symposium Face Off: The Provocation and Possibilities of Masks and Head Coverings which emerged from her interest in how society changed and adapted through the wearing of the COVID face masks during the pandemic. Elizabeth’s paper for the conference, ‘Who is the Sick One Here: Mask Refusal and Ambivalent Social Identity in COVID America’, explored the links between American cultural memory of ‘The Frontier’ and the cultural trope of ‘Pioneer Spirit’ in the visceral rejection of the COVID medical mask as a symbol of fragility and sickness. This will soon be published as a chapter in an edited Intellect Books volume. She is Guest Editor of the Fashion, Style and Popular Culture Special Issue, ‘Dressing through Pandemics’.

Elizabeth co-edited the Bloomsbury volume Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities  (2023). Her solo chapter, ‘The American Look: Memories of Not Fitting In’, introduced the term ‘body dressing work’ to articulate her experience negotiating the social norms and expectations of clothing the suburban American female body with the anxiety of living with a spinal deformity and was highlighted in The Guardian (2022).

Elizabeth has developed the concept of ‘cultural memory of dress’ where national popular history and popular culture are woven as narratives into clothing tastes and styles. This is explored in her Bloomsbury solo chapter (above) and the publications “The American Look”: The transformation of women’s sportswear in 1930s and 1940s America’  (2023) and ‘The Shift Dress as Cultural Meaning’ (2018).

Elizabeth is also interested in the ways in which collaborative learning enhances students’ creativity, self-confidence, and sense of self. Her practice-based doctorate, The Artist’s Book: Making as embodied knowledge of practice and the self, considered the role of creativity and the pedagogy of making in the development of identity via working through personal and cultural memory with visual practice.

Since 2020 Elizabeth has collaborated yearly with colleagues from Pearl Academy in Delhi and Mumbai to develop ‘The Global Artisan Project’, a collaborative online international learning (COIL) project. This co-creative project connects undergraduate fashion students in the UK and India with Indian artisans and their underrepresented brands. She and her Pearl Academy colleagues presented a paper introducing this project at the Future of International Fashion and Design Education hosted by Istituto Marangoni in 2022 which will soon be published as a chapter in a Routledge edited volume.

Elizabeth is also an artist bookmaker. Her handbound artist’s books have been exhibited in the UK, Ireland, Germany, and the United States.

Academic and professional qualifications

Qualifications

• PhD (2017): The Artist’s Book: Making as emodied knowlege of creativity and the self (2017), University of Chester (practice-based, pass with no corrections)
• MA: Visual Culture (2008), MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University (Distinction)
• Postgraduate Certificate of Eduation (2004): Higher, Further & Adult Education
• BA (Hons) Graphic Design (2003): Manchester Metropolitan University (First Class Honours)

Recognitions

• Professional Member of the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA)
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (FRSA)
• Higher Education Academy: Senior Fellow (SFHEA) 

Previous Employment

2018-2019 Senior Lecturer, Academic Professional Development, University Teaching Academy, MMU

2017-2018 Staffordshire University, Head of Department of Art & Design

2013-2017: Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Arts and Media, University of Chester

2009-2017 University of Chester, Programme Leader of Fashion Marketing and Communication, Senior Lecturer Graphic Design, MA Design, MA Fine Art and Senior University Teaching Fellow.

Consultancy and advisory roles

Consultant expert advisor on fashion inclusivity.

Visiting and honorary positions

November 2023: Appointed as Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence by theDepartment of Textile and Apparel Managment, University of Missouri, Columibia, Missouri, USA.

Editorial Board membership

September 2023: Appointed as Associate Editor of the journal of Fashion, Style and  Popular Culture (Intellect)

Membership of professional associations

International Textile and Apparel Association (Professional Member)

Royal Society of Arts (Fellow)

Undergraduate teaching

Elizabeth leads and contributes to undergraduate study across the Manchester Fashion Institute:

• BA(Hons) Fashion Promotion
• BA(Hons) Fashion Communication
• BSc(Hons) Fashion Marketing
• BA(Hons) Fashion Art Direction
• Fashion Cultures and Critical Studies (department-wide units)

Postgraduate teaching

Elizabeth is the unit leader of the core research methods unit which is studied across all of Manchester Fashion Institute’s Fashion Business masters programmes:

• MSc Fashion Buying and Merchandising Management
• MSc International Fashion Business Management
• MSc International Fashion Marketing
• MSc Luxury Fashion Management

External examiner roles

• MA Creative Direction in Fashion and Beauty, Solent University (from 2020)
• BA(Hons) Fashion Branding with Communicaiton, Leeds Arts University (from 2023)

Postgraduate research supervision

Elizabeth supports research-led students in their postgraduate enquiry, particularly the interdisciplinary areas of fashion and dress study and the intersectionality of practice-as-research and practice-led study.

Completed

• Exploring Gender-Neutral Fashion as a Product of a Dual Heritage Maker (practice-based enquiry, 2023)

In Progress

• Folklore on the Welsh Boarders (practice-based enquiry, expected completion: 2025)

October 2024 start

1. Re-Making Menswear: Crafting a modern Indian heritage model for inclusive, conscious style-fashion-dress
2. Clothing Culture of Lower Castes in India;
3. Critically exploring the heritage of Traditional Palestinian Thobe Design and Construction; and Establishing a framework for sustainable practice development of Thobes within Contemporary Fashion.