Staff Profile

My main fields of interest and expertise include: Advertising, consumption & promotional cultures; fashion and society; celebrity culture; identities; class, ‘taste’ and aesthetics; social and cultural theory; research methods; gender and sexuality; cultures of work, employment and leisure and urban cultures...to name but a few!

My PhD, gained from Durham University in 2007, explored the gendered nature of aesthetics within fashion retail and the extent to which ‘aesthetic labour’ can become ‘mobile’, moving beyond the workplace and into other social spheres. This project underlined  how such ‘mobility’ can lead to both ‘hidden injuries’ of service work but also be used as a resource to be exploited by workers, within local and wider cultural economies.

I am currently Chair of the Board of Studies and Deputy Head of Education, Learning & Teaching for Media, Culture, Heritage.

I have previously held the roles of Programme Director for our 'flagship' and internationally recognised undergraduate degree in Media, Communication & Cultural Studies (2017-2020); Staff Facilitator for the Student-staff Committee and Staff Co-Ordinator for the Student Peer-Mentoring Scheme.

 Currently I am eager to accept PhD proposals from candidates with an interest in Advertising, Fashion & Promotional cultures and from other areas aligned to my own expertise and research interests as highlighted above (e.g. masculinities, social media, cultural economies etc.)

More recently my research/publication output has been focused towards an edited collection with colleagues surrounding scholarship and research during and related to the global pandemic (Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change) with Brill/Haymarket publishing (in preparation). In addition to this I am also currently developing my own student textbook on Promotional Cultures with Palgrave Macmillan (in preparation).

At a pedagogical level I have been involved with the Young Maketers for the North East in conjunction with the Newcastle University Business School and developed my own ‘promotions’ game-based learning project that launched November 2020 in partnership with local/national/international organisations. Students worked remotely in groups to create advertising/promotional media in response to a client brief and the challenges facing professional communications practitioners and consumers as a result of lockdown measures. Students, representatives from industry and colleagues within the University participated in a (digital) series of events and subsequent review panel to help provide guidance, feedback and announce prize-winners.  

I am also working with colleagues Tina Sikka & Gareth Longstaff as part of an accessible knowledge project to develop an academic podcast series 'Mediating 2020' in conjunction with Palgrave. This experimental project will build on academic podcasting currently taking place in Canada and a number of other countries and institutions. We aim to develop it into a form of scholarly output, teaching, and public communication with widespread appeal.

in April 2021 I organised and hosted the digital conference 'Locking Down the Fashion Sector' with national and international colleagues, industry experts and stakeholders. the conference explores the challenges and circumstances that the fashion sector has faced as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. The conference provides a critical, creative and interdisciplinary discussion space for academics, researchers and industry professionals to explore, examine and evaluate the agility, innovation, practicality and longevity of ‘flexible’ and ‘covid-evolved’ fashion processes across industry contexts (design, production, promotion, retail & consumption). the conference webpages are available here: https://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/fashionlockdown/

For the current academic year 2020/2021 I will be teaching on the following modules:

• MCH3012: Fashion, Communication & Culture
• MCH8199/8299: MA Dissertation Project

Previous teaching includes module leadership and lead contribution on the following:

• Introduction to Media Studies 
• Introduction to Social & Cultural Studies
• Researching Media, Communication & Culture I
• Research Methods
• Representations: Identity, Culture & Society
• Visual Culture
• Sex, Sexuality & Desire
• Advertising & Consumption
• Themes and Issues in Contemporary Media, Communication and Cultural Studies
• Politics, Power & Communication
• Research Dissertation Supervision
• Essential Academic Skills for Media Students
• Media Analysis

• Walls S. Examining Male Service Work:Gendered and Sexualised Aesthetics. Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012.
• Walls S. TBC. 2018. In Preparation.
• Walls S. TBC. 2018. In Preparation.
• Walls S. 'Beard Porn: "Manly Aesthetics" & Mediated Male Grooming. Men & Masculinities 2017. In Preparation.
• Walls S. ‘Beyond the Beard: Mapping the Cultural Politics of Embodiment, Class, Age, Masculinity & Hipster Consumption.'. Consumption, Markets, Culture 2017. In Preparation.