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 Director of Undergraduate Education in the School of Arts & Cultures. Previous leadership and management roles include:

• Head of Education, Learning & Teaching inMedia, Culture, Heritage (Jan 2021- Jan 2023);
• Chair of the Board of Studies in Media, Culture, Heritage (2021-2023;
• Degree Programme Director for Media, Communication & Cultural Studies (2017-2020);
• Staff Facilitator for the Student-staff Committee (2017-2020);
• Staff Co-Ordinator for the Student Peer-Mentoring Scheme (2017-2020).

Accepting 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 (2023) Brill/Haymarket publishing. In addition to this I am also currently developing my own student textbook on Promotional Cultures with Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming 2024).

At a pedagogical level I have been involved with the Young Marketers 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 The Institute for Social Science at Newcastle University. 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 at https://conferences.ncl.ac.uk/fashionlockdown/ The conference served as a springboard to pull together academics, makers and practitioners for an edited collection being published with Intellect: Walls, S., (ed) Re-Fashioning the Fashion Sector? Exploring Resilience & Evolution, Bristol: Intellect (forthcoming 2023).  

For the current academic year 2022/2023 I will be teaching on the following modules:

• MCH3012: Fashion, Communication & Culture
• MCH3063: Advertising and Consumption
• MCH3073/72: UG Dissertation Research Project
• 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
• Themes and Issues in Contemporary Media, Communication and Cultural Studies
• Politics, Power & Communication
• Research Dissertation Supervision
• Essential Academic Skills for Media Students
• Media Analysis

• Authored Books

  • Walls S. Critical Approaches to Promotional Culture: Theory, Strategy, Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. In Preparation.
  • Walls S. Examining Male Service Work:Gendered and Sexualised Aesthetics. Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012.

• Book Chapters

  • Walls S. Towards a New Cultural Politics of Fashion?. In: Walls,S, ed. Re-Fashioning the Fashion Sector? Evolution and Resilience. Bristol: Intellect, 2023. In Preparation.
  • Walls S. 'Pubs, Primark and Pasta-Making Machines': Social Class, the 'Covidiot' and Neoliberal Narratives of Consumer Practice. In: Sikka T; Longstaff G; Walls S, ed. Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change. Leiden: Brill, 2023, pp.14-32.

• Edited Books

  • Walls S, ed. Re-Fashioning the Fashion Sector? Evolution and Resilience. Bristol: Intellect, 2023. In Preparation.
  • Sikka T, Longstaff G, Walls S, ed. Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change. Leiden: Brill, 2023.