Dr Sarah Gilligan

Dr Sarah Gilligan’s research centres upon clothing and gendered identities on and beyond the screen. Through an interdisciplinary, cross-media approach grounded in contemporary visual, material, and popular cultures, her research critically examines the distinct, yet symbiotic relationships between screen costuming, fashion media, and contemporary star-celebrity culture.

Her recent journal articles include:

• From Scotland to South Korea: Tilda Swinton, place and otherness in fashion communication. 
• Dressing Keanu: Sprezzatura and fashioning ageing masculinity on the red carpet. (Open access).
• Fashion forward killer: Villanelle, costuming and queer style in Killing Eve. (Open access).
• Fashioning masculinities: critical reflections on curation and future directions in masculinity studies.
• Dressing, Undressing and Redressing: Costuming Identities in Fernando León de Aranoa’s El buen patrón. (Open access).
• Growing old (dis)gracefully: Spanish masculinities and star-celebrity culture.

Sarah’s current research project (Re)fashioning Ageing Identities: Screen Costuming, Fashion Media, and Biographical Wardrobes combines sole, collaborative and co-designed research to explore the sartorial representation and consumption of ageing in contemporary transnational  cinema, TV drama, and fashion media. Having recently co-organised FCVC2025: Fashioning, Ageing, Emotion and Memory (Rovinj, Croatia), Sarah is currently guest editing a special issue of Film, Fashion, and Consumption journal (Winter 2026), together with developing bidding plans and working on a range of publications.

As the co-founder and chair of the international Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures (FCVC) Network, Sarah received the prestigious British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award. She has co-organised international conferences in Croatia, France, online, and a range of in-person events in the UK. Additionally, she mentors PGRs, ECRs and independent researchers internationally and in the UK. Following previous FCVC Network events, Sarah has guest edited special issues of Clothing Cultures (6.1), Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture (5.2-3), and Critical Studies in Men's Fashion (7.1-2).

Sarah has delivered keynote papers, invited talks and workshops at a range of conferences, pedagogical, and public engagement events (including for the V&A and BFI), together with presenting her research and chairing panels at academic events in the USA, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and the UK. Her research is published in a wide range of peer reviewed journal articles and edited collections.

Additionally, Textual Transformations is an ongoing experimental practice strand of Sarah’s research on tactile transmediality in which modified books and repurposed objects are used to bridge the material distance between representations and lived experiences. Together with her visual essay 'Down to Earth: Textual transformations, mark-making and grief', published in Lighthouse (27), Sarah’s creative work has been recently exhibited at Gallery North, as part of the What are Words Worth group show (2024) and at The Late Shows (2025). 

Sarah joined Northumbria in 2020 as a senior lecturer, following a career in further and adult education. She currently teaches across all levels of BA (Hons) Fashion Communication, and supervises MRes and PhD candidates in the School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries (DACI). She is highly committed to Widening Participation in HE, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Sarah is a long-standing member of the editorial team for Film, Fashion and Consumption journal, and is on the editorial boards of Fashion, Style and Popular Culture, and Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty. She has also previously served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles. Sarah is a member of the Critical Costume steering group and a member of the European Popular Culture Association, and is regularly asked to peer review articles, book proposals and manuscripts for leading journals, and academic publishers.

Sarah welcomes inquiries from prospective students, PhD researchers, collaborators, and non-academic stakeholders on topics connected to her research interests.