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Dr Sarah Gilligan

Assistant Professor

Department: Northumbria School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries

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

Her recent journal articles include:

Sarah’s current research project (Re)fashioning Ageing Identities: Costume, Fashion, and Biographical Wardrobes combines sole, collaborative and co-designed research to explore the sartorial representation and consumption of contemporary European and Anglophone 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 an edited collection, articles, and a monograph project.

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 in the UK. Additionally, she mentors PGRs, ECRs and independent researchers in the UK and internationally. Following previous FCVC 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 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 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, is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), and mentors staff at different stages of their research and teaching careers. 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.

Sarah Gilligan

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Book review: Fashionable Masculinities: Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals, edited by Vicki Karaminas, Adam Geczy, and Pamela Church Gibson (2022), Gilligan, S. 28 Feb 2025, In: Film Fashion and Consumption
  • Dressing Keanu: Sprezzatura and fashioning ageing masculinity on the red carpet, Gilligan, S. 28 Mar 2025, In: Critical Studies in Men's Fashion
  • Dressing, Undressing, and Redressing: Costuming Identities in Fernando León de Aranoa's El buen patrón (2021), Collins, J., Gilligan, S. 11 Jul 2025, In: Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies
  • From Scotland to South Korea: Tilda Swinton, place, and otherness in fashion communication, Gilligan, S. 30 Jun 2025, In: Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture
  • Textual Transformations: Design Feminisms Research Group open studio installation at The Late Shows, Newcastle, Gilligan, S. 16 May 2025
  • Down to Earth: textual transformations, mark-making and grief, Gilligan, S. 28 Mar 2024
  • Textual Transformations: What are Words Worth? Group show, Gilligan, S. 24 Apr 2024
  • Fashioning masculinities: critical reflections on curation and future directions in masculinity studies, Gilligan, S. 1 Jun 2023, In: Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty
  • Growing old (dis)gracefully: Spanish masculinities and contemporary star-celebrity culture, Collins, J., Gilligan, S. 1 Mar 2023, In: Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities

  • Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
  • Oral presentation: ”Where does my mother end and I begin?” Tilda Swinton, doubling, duality and dislocation on and beyond the screen. 2025
  • Examination: MA Costume Design: Performing Arts and Film. 2025
  • Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures 2025 2025
  • Oral presentation: FCVC2025: Opening address, panel chair, publishing panel, and closing remarks. 2025
  • Invited talk: Textual transformations: mark-making, emotion and identity in modified books. 2024
  • Oral presentation: Owning the space like a boss: gender, costume and performance in The Good Boss. 2024
  • Editorial work: Bloomsbury (Publisher) 2023
  • Oral presentation: From whoah to Wick: Fashioning masculinities and the ageing representation of Keanu Reeves in European style magazines. 2023
  • Oral presentation: ‘The hottest professor on campus’: Keanu Reeves, Dark Academia and fashioning ageing masculinity on the red carpet. 2023
  • Oral presentation: Redressing Keanu: black suits, collars, beards and fashioning ageing masculinities. 2022

Casci Ritchie (Un)dressing the Love Symbol: The life, death and legacy of Prince’s wardrobe Start Date: 01/10/2021 End Date: 10/06/2025

  • PhD
  • MA
  • PGCert
  • CertEd
  • BA (Hons)
  • Senior Fellow Higher Education Academy SFHEA


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