In this episode of the Feeling Fashion Podcast, I joined host Adele Varcoe and fellow Footwear Research Networker Dr Ellen Sampson to explore how shoes shape and are shaped by human experience. Having known each other for nearly 15 years, this conversation allowed Ellen and me to explore our overlapping yet distinct research approaches to footwear's role in processes of identification and as mediators between bodies, environments, cultures, and societies.

While environmental sustainability is becoming a priority for brands and the media, cultural sustainability often takes a back seat. In this article for The Conversation AU/NZ I discussed the ongoing battle between Deckers Brands and Australian manufacturers over the right to use ‘ugg’ to sell quintessentially Australian sheepskin boots outside Australia.

Not only do shoes affect how we move through the world physically, but they also shape how we relate to others socially. In this article for The Conversation I use Kamala Harris’ Converse All-Stars to explore how shoes shape our identity and sense of self.

Have you ever wondered what becomes of your old sports shoes? In this article for newswire publisher 360info, Dr Rebecca Van Amber and I examine some of the current sustainability challenges facing the sports and athleisure apparel market.

As the Bata Shoe Museum’s exhibition Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks comes to an end, I review Senior Curator Elizabeth Semmelhack’s important exhibition publication for the Footwear Research Network.

How can sneakers be used to teach high school students about the environmental impacts of fashion and footwear production? This project with students from Melbourne’s St Columba’s College provided an opportunity to find out.

How can Indigenous Knowledge systems assist educators in addressing the climate emergency, decolonisation and balance the outsourcing of knowledge to AI?

As the fashion industry strives towards a more circular and sustainable future, Professor Andrew Groves and I explored the pros and cons of sneaker collaborations for The Conversation.

As the higher education sector responds to increasing calls to decolonise the curriculum, how do we, as educators, identify and reflect on our own motivations and capacities to make change? This article reflects on my personal journey as a white British female academic living and working in Australia. All opinions my own.

How can old shoes be used to effect a shift from a traditional ‘design-led’ to a circular ‘material-driven’ approach to design? In this article for the Footwear Research Network, I presented research at RMIT University that used shoes to explore the transferable knowledge and capabilities that can be developed through material reuse and upcycling in design education.

In 2020, students of RMIT’s School of Fashion and Textiles teamed up with German footwear manufacturer Trippen to find accessory solutions for leather waste materials. The collaboration was part of research to develop material-driven design processes in education.

Following the recent auction of Steve Jobs’ Birkenstock Sandals, this article for the Footwear Research Network explores the value of celebrity shoes in life and death.

In this review for the Footwear Research Network I discuss the Design Observer’s Futures Archive podcast on ‘The Shoe’. The podcast featured insights from presenter Lee Moreau, Garnette Cadogan, Kevin Bethune, Elizabeth Semmelhack and myself to consider how we assign meaning to shoes.

It was my pleasure recently to review Ellen Sampson’s book ‘Worn: Footwear, Attachment and the Affects of Wear’ for Fashion Theory.

Read my original manuscript here.

Wearing slippers while working from home? What might these very private and intimate forms of footwear tell us about ourselves?

Paper delivered at the AAANZ Conference Ngā Tūtaki – Encounter/s: Agency, Embodiment, Exchange, Ecologies, 3-6 December, 2019 at The University of Auckland.

‘This is Not a Shoe: An Exploration of the Co-Constitutive Relationship Between Representations and Embodied Experiences of Shoes’, doctoral thesis assessed by Dr. Agnès Rocamora and Dr. Katherine Davies, awarded April 2017.

Conference paper delivered at The End of Fashion conference: Massey University 7th-10th December 2016

Carnaby Street: perhaps London's most famous shoe-shopping location. Filmed during a lunch hour this seven and a half minute video observes the shoes of those passing through the popular location.

Open source article in the ‘Materiality’ issue of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, edited by Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher, published by Intellect.