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Dr Sarah Bowman

Assistant Professor

Department: Northumbria School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries

Sarah has over 25 years working in organisational communications in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors primarily in London.  She has held a variety of senior positions in the UK and in Europe before entering academia where she obtained her PhD in corporate communications. Her formative academic career was at the University of the Arts, London before moving to Northumbria in 2017.  Sarah is rhizomatic and ecological in her research interests and is drawn to overlapping and interconnected themes, in particular how stakeholders, organisations, professions and communities navigate change. She uses a range of conceptual frameworks to explore phenomena from sense-making and sense-giving, to various sociological theories, as well as drawing on and in rhetorical and visual communications.

Sarah Bowman

Sarah has over 25 years working in organisational communications in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.  Her interests focus on how to bring about, understand, manage, and implement change.  Areas of expertise include:

  • organisational communications drawing on a range of sociological theories from the work of Bourdieu, Habermas, Bauman, Goffman, Foucault and more recently a range of feminist theories (in particular, radical feminism)
  • building belonging, community, and identification both inside and outside organisations drawing on the theoretical lens of sense-making and sense-giving 
  • exploring the sociology and evolution of the professions in an age of liquid modernity, with a specific interest in 'discourse work' such as public relations, public affairs, advocacy, and activism and is becoming increasingly drawn to metamodernism to reflect the reality of working in complexity
  • radical pedagogy to support graduates and those in the professions to build the sensibilities to navigate the precarity and liminality prevalent in late modernity
  • the role of the media in shaping and reflecting cultural norms

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Public Relations and Communications, Bowman, S. 27 May 2025, The Public Relations Handbook, Routledge
  • Public Relations and Corporate Communications, Bowman, S., Walker, G. 27 May 2025, The Public Relations Handbook, Routledge
  • Public Relations, Politics and the Media, Bowman, S. 27 May 2025, The Public Relations Handbook, Routledge
  • Sex, Sexuality, and Sexism: A Generational Comparison of Women’s Freelance Career Experiences in the UK Public Relations Industry, Bowman, S., Yaxley, H., Bridgen, E. 27 May 2025, Gender and Freelancing in the Communication Industries, Emerald
  • What is Public Relations?, Bowman, S., Walker, G. 27 May 2025, The Public Relations Handbook, Routledge
  • Developing an original Café Delphi historical method to research women’s individual and collective experiences of sex, sexuality, and sexism in PR in the 1990s, Bowman, S., Yaxley, H. 2 Jan 2024, In: Corporate Communications
  • Metamodern sensibilities: Toward a pedagogical framework for a wicked world, Bowman, S., Salter, J., Stephenson, C., Humble, D. 3 Jul 2024, In: Teaching in Higher Education
  • PR Power in the 1990s: Sex, sexuality, and sexism – a UK perspective, Bowman, S., Yaxley, H. 25 Mar 2024, Women’s Work in Public Relations, Bingley, Emerald
  • Recognising a signature pedagogy for Public Relations teaching and learning in the last twenty years: The major driver for change in Public Relations education has been the constant struggle to prove our value, Kinnear, S., Bowman, S. 2 Jan 2024, In: Corporate Communications
  • Sensemaking and Persuasive Sensegiving: The Thank You North East regional Covid-19 campaign, the brief we never wanted!, Ellis, T., Bowman, S. 21 Aug 2024, In: Journal of Creative Communications

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Examination: The Institutionalisation Of Whistleblowing In The Scottish Health Service: An Interplay Between Organisations, Media And Political Influence 2024
  • Publication Peer-review: Journal of Communication (Journal) 2023
  • Publication Peer-review: Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education (Journal) 2022
  • Publication Peer-review: Corporate Communications (Journal) 2021
  • Membership of committee: Chartered Institute of Public Relations (External organisation) 2020
  • Membership of committee: Chartered Institute of Public Relations (External organisation) 2020
  • Other: North East Sales and Marketing Academy 2020
  • Other: Examiner, PR Academy 2020
  • Consultancy: Project: Roll out of CDRC_Precision for the Academic Health Science Network 2019
  • Organising a conference, workshop, ...: 19th Annual Congress of the European Public Relations Research Association (EUPRERA) 2017

Ke Xue The Development of Short Video User-Interactive Digital Media from UGC to PGC Start Date: 04/12/2023

  • Philosophy PhD August 04 2017
  • Senior Fellow Higher Education Academy SFHEA 2021


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