Steve Jobs’ $220,000 Birkenstocks
Following the recent auction of Steve Jobs’ Birkenstock Sandals, Alex Sherlock explores the value of celebrity shoes in life and death.
Introducing: Jo Cope
In the first of a regular feature introducing our esteemed Network contributors, we shine the spotlight on our newest addition, fashion artist and conceptual designer Jo Cope.
Review: The Futures Archive ‘The Shoe’ (S1/E10)
For many, shoes are considered a luxury and their study… frivolous. The insights shared in The Futures Archive’s recent podcast ‘The Shoe’ highlight the often critical importance shoes play in processes of being and becoming.
Book review:
Alex Sherlock reviews Ellen Sampson’s book ‘Worn: Footwear, Attachment and the Affects of Wear’ for the academic journal Fashion Theory.
Taking Stock: a Footwear Research Review and Reading List
In the interest of expanding and advancing the field of footwear studies, the Footwear Research Network’s contributors have put their heads together to produce a list of recommended past and present academic texts upon which to build future contributions.
The Rise of the Slipper
Wearing slippers while working from home? The Covid pandemic has caused a rise in slipper sales and an increased awareness of these very private and intimate forms of footwear. Following an interview for the Guardian Australia, Alex Sherlock asks what slippers might tell us about ourselves.
“Everybody haffi ask weh mi get mi Clarks”
Fashion Consumption and Cultural Exchange: Conference 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’: doctoral thesis
‘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.
'It's kind of where the shoe gets you to I suppose':
Materializing Identity with Footwear.
Open source article in the ‘Materiality’ issue of Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, edited by Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher, published by Intellect.
do you wear Clarks Originals?
Call for focus group participants -
The ‘If the Shoe Fits’ project in the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield is now approaching its end, however there is still time to participate in the research.
A Week in Mary Beard's Shoes
Over the last week social media feeds have been rife with comments about historian Mary Beard's controversial decision to 'come out' and write about her love of shoes for the Daily Mail (8th May 2013). With almost 3 years of research on the sociological significance of shoes now behind us the ITSF team felt compelled to contribute to the debate by responding to Turner’s attack.
If the Shoe Fits: Project film
This short film, produced by Sheffield Vision, introduces our research project at the University of Sheffield which is finding out how shoes contribute to people's identities and the ways in which footwear enables them to move between different parts of their lives.
Search the archive for more articles from the Footwear Research Network:
More From the Footwear Research Network…
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![A pair of tan leather Jacoform shoes owned by Footwear Research Network contributor Professor Andrew Groves photographed against a black background.]()
Contributors
Meet our internationally acclaimed network of contributors.
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![A photograph of a shoe gallery at Shoes of No Shoes (SONS), Kruisem, Belgium.]()
Museums & Archives
A list of publicly available museums and archives in alphabetical order by country.
If the shoe fits:
FootweaR, Identity & Transition
The Footwear Research Network is an outcome of the ESRC-funded research project If the Shoe Fits: Footwear Identity and Transition at the University of Sheffield (2010-2013). Learn more about the project and research outputs here.
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The Footwear Research Network is an outcome of the ESRC-funded research project If the Shoe Fits: Footwear Identity and Transition at the University of Sheffield (2010-2013).
Learn more here
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Watch the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ documentary to learn more about the research project and the relationship between wearers and their shoes. Filmed and produced by Sheffield Vision.
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Learn more about the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ research team and board of advisors.
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Following the success of the original ITSF project, further funding was secured in 2015 for a follow-on project, ‘If the Shoe Fits: Enabling Patient-Centred Podiatry’.
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A number of papers and publications were produced directly from the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ research and in association with the project. Access the full list here.