Kirraly Antcliff is a Sustainability in Fashion and Creative Industries Masters graduate currently based in Berlin. She is actively engaged in a research project focused on Ecosystemic Circular Innovation to explore the trajectories of the emerging concept of Digital Product Passports in the outdoor apparel industry. Through her work, Kirraly aims to inspire action towards a more accountable and regenerative fashion and footwear industry that values transparency, circularity and creativity.

Naomi Braithwaite is an Associate Professor in Fashion Marketing at Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art and Design. Before undertaking a PhD, Naomi spent several years working in the designer shoe industry, specialising in retail management and international sales. Naomi’s research focuses on material culture and self-identity which she examines using visual ethnography. She has a particular interest in exploring the relationship between footwear choices and individual identity.

Emily Brayshaw is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Design School of the University of Technology Sydney and a costume designer. Her research interests include fashion, dress, textiles, and performance costumes in Europe and America between 1890 and 1930, feathers, the aesthetics of Kitsch, the viola, knitting, and ugly shoes. Emily writes regularly for The Conversation and is currently receiving funding to write two histories about Birkenstocks for an upcoming book to be published by Birkenstock in 2024.  

Katt Brown, a British/Swedish poet, writer, and lyricist, has a passion for language and nature. With a background in Linguistics and Speech and Language Therapy, she uses language creatively to explore diverse emotions and themes. Katt's work, marked by her attention to detail and imagination, reflects her belief in hope, humanity, and love. She views poetry and music as tools for positive change, connecting with people and influencing the world.

Fiona’s career has spanned commercial fashion and textiles design, teaching and academic research. Projects include studies of the sensory experience of wearing denim jeans, business suits, linking body movement with the generation of sound and the changing relationship women living with rheumatoid arthritis have with their clothing and footwear. Currently a full-time artist, her practice centres on less conscious modes of perception: touch, hearing, sense of time, movement, atmosphere: where mind, body and world interact. Fiona has exhibited widely and published research outcomes in the context of health, sociology, anthropology, interaction and inclusive design.

Lorenzo Cantoni is full professor at USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland), Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, where he is director of the Institute of Digital Technologies for Communication. Furthermore, he is director of the Master in Digital Fashion Communication, done in collaboration with the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and director of the Master in International Tourism.

Jo Cope is a female artist, exploring feet and shoes as a life practice. Working at the intersection of fashion, art, craft and performance, her shoes can be presented as individual artefacts, larger installations, live performances and—in her work with UK homeless charity Shelter—as tools for social activism. Jo has an MA in Fashion Artefacts from the London College of Fashion and has worked as a fashion educator and guest speaker in universities in the UK and internationally for almost two decades. www.jocope.com . Read our full introduction here.

Andrew Groves is Professor of Fashion Design at the University of Westminster, and the director of the Westminster Menswear Archive, which he founded in 2016. It is the world’s only public menswear archive, establishing a space for students, academics, and designers in industry to conduct object-based research. In 2019, Groves co-curated Invisible Men: An Anthology from the Westminster Menswear Archive. He is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Locating Menswear network. www.andrewgroves.com.

Jenny Hockey retired as Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Sheffield University in 2009 to make more time for writing and reading poetry. Her research interests included shoes and identity, along with death, memory, landscape and loss, all of which now inspire her poetry. In 2013 she received a New Poets Bursary Award and her debut collection, ‘Going to bed with the moon’, appeared in 2019.

Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne is a Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing and Enterprise at Torrens University Australia, Melbourne. Her PhD (RMIT University) examined the relationship between veganism and fashion consumption, where she identified obstacles encountered by vegan consumers in sourcing compliant and desirable products such as footwear. She has presented her work at international conferences, delivered industry talks, and published business case studies, academic book chapters and journal articles. Rachel is available for speaking engagements and consultancy opportunities.

Dr Emily Nicholls is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York, UK. She is interested in identity, gender and the links between the ways we adorn the body and our sense of self. Emily was the Research Associate on the project ‘If the Shoe Fits: Enabling Patient-Centred Podiatry’, working with Professor Victoria Robinson and the Podiatry Team at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals to explore the links between identity and footwear amongst Podiatry patients.

Victoria Robinson was Director of the Centre for Women's Studies, University of York, UK from 2016-2021, and is now Emeritus Professor of Sociology. Fashion and footwear was a central research interest, along with gender and sexuality, masculinity, risk sports and the sociology of everyday life. She now spends her time between Sheffield, in the North of England and Nice, in the South of France, where collecting vintage fashion remains a passion.

Ellen Sampson is an artist and material culture researcher whose work uses film, photography, and writing to explore the relationships between bodies, memory and garments, both in museums and archives, and in everyday life. She is a Senior Fellow in Design at Northumbria University and previously a Curatorial Fellow at The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Professorial Fellow at UCA. Her book Worn: Footwear Attachment and the Affects of Wear was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

Rebecca Shawcross is the Senior Shoe Curator at Northampton Museums and Art Gallery. She is responsible for the Designated Shoe Collection, which includes collections management, exhibitions, research and enquiries, talks and advising other museums and the media. She is interested in concealed footwear, the shoe industry in Northampton and shoes and identity. Her book Shoes: An Illustrated History was published by Bloomsbury in 2014 with a revised second issue out in 2022.

Alexandra Sherlock is a researcher and lecturer in the School of Fashion & Textiles at RMIT University, Melbourne. Her research is situated in the field of material culture studies and focuses mainly on fashion, footwear, identity, embodiment and the theory of affordances. She was the postgraduate Researcher on the ‘If the Shoe Fits’ research project (2010-2013). In 2021 she relaunched the If the Shoe Fits blog site as the Footwear Research Network. www.alexandrasherlock.com.

Cecília Soares (PhD, Sociology) is an independent researcher currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her major interests are dress history and material culture and their connections to modernity and globalization. Her first book, Barões de Tamancos: uma história social dos sapatos no Rio de Janeiro (1808-1914), a social history on Brazilian footwear during the 19th century, was published in Brazil in 2023.

Charlotte Stachel is a PhD candidate within the Heritage & Innovation Project at USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano, Switzerland). Her research focuses on the digitization of a fashion brand’s heritage and its related digital and phygital communication practices. Her position is funded within the Lifestyle Tech Competence Center (LTCC), of which USI is a founding member.

Sean Williams is an obsessed sneaker lover who has owned over 4000 pairs of sneakers since the age of thirteen. He is the Co-founder of the SOLEcial Studies Community Academy (SSCA), the world’s first sneaker business and culture academy based in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Sean has taught SOLEcial Studies in partnership with colleges and universities around the world and curates exhibitions to raise awareness of the social and cultural significance of sneakers and the sneaker industry.

Sophie Woodward is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester who carries out research into everyday lives, relationships, consumption and material culture. She is the author of five books including the recent Material Methods (Sage) mirroring ongoing interests in creative methods, and materiality. She is currently carrying out research into Dormant Things.