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Naomi Braithwaite

Associate Professor

Nottingham School of Art & Design

Staff Group(s)
Fashion marketing, management and communication

Role

Dr Naomi Braithwaite is an Associate Professor in Fashion and Material Culture at Nottingham School of Art and Design.  Naomi is an active researcher at NTU leading on projects that use ethnographic methods to question relationships between fashion and identity. Her research is ground breaking with global reach and involves significant collaborations with other HEIs in the UK and worldwide. Naomi’s work is widely published in print and online and she has a strong track record of contributing to public exhibitions and speaking platforms such as the Conversation, the V&A and Chatham House.

Naomi is a PhD supervisor across the Fashion Knitwear and Textile and Fashion Management Marketing and Communication departments at NTU and contributes to the BA (Hons) Fashion Marketing and Branding and the MA Fashion Management Marketing and Communication courses. She also holds external examiner roles at a number of prestigious UK HEIs.

Career overview

Following a BA in Theology and History of Art and a MA in History of Textiles and Dress, Naomi started her career in the fashion industry. Primarily working in Retail Management for the London department store, Harvey Nichols, before becoming the Global Sales Manager for a designer shoe brand, which involved running the company’s wholesale accounts in the USA, UK, Ireland, and Australia.

Leaving the fashion industry in 2007 to follow an academic path, Naomi achieved an MRes in Anthropology at UCL 2008, before undertaking her PhD at NTU, 2008 to 2012.  Entitled Shoe Design: An Ethnographic Study in Creativity, Naomi’s thesis contributed knowledge regarding the creative practice of independent shoe designers, framing her findings in the theoretical context of materiality, material culture, design and fashion. Her PhD findings have resulted in various publications, including an authored chapter for the V&A’s exhibition catalogue Shoes, Pleasure and Pain, an interview on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and a feature in a forthcoming documentary on the late iconic British shoe designer, Terry de Havilland.

Since achieving her PhD Naomi has taught at Manchester Metropolitan University and had a Post Doctoral Fellowship in Product Lifetimes at NTU, 2014-2015, working on the ESPRC funded Centre for Industrial Energy, Materials and Products (CIEMAP) project. In 2015 Naomi became a Senior Lecturer in the Fashion Management, Marketing and Communication Department at NTU.

Research areas

In 2008 Naomi established the Shoe and Tell research project which examines the relationship between footwear and self-identity in the context of material culture. Drawing from visual ethnography Naomi photographs and interviews individuals about their shoes as a lens through which to examine feelings and experiences around self-presentation, individuality and relationships to self and other. The project initially focused on the experiences of young adults ages 16-25 years. Since its creation the project has expanded to include other themes:

The Virtual Shoe Salon is an open source, longitudinal research project that was created as a response to how to continue researching during Covid-19.  Working with NTU students in the FMMC and Psychology departments the research takes a participatory approach where individuals take shoe selfies and write narratives around meanings and feelings in relation to their worn shoes.

The Graduation Shoes Project ran at NTU between 2019 and 2023. Over 1400 NTU graduates have participated through shoe photographs and interviews focused on shoe choices and experiences of being a student.

Data from the different strands of the Shoe and Tell project has informed teaching at NTU and led to a number of publications and exhibitions including The Being Human Festival in 2018 and at Liverpool John Moores in 2021.

Other research activities have supported the development of Naomi’s research interests in fashion and material culture. These include a collaborative project with MMU that addresses Education for Sustainable Development within fashion business courses, and a project with Hong Kong Design Institute entitled Fashioning Change, which explores student attitudes towards fashion consumption.

Naomi is also an ethnographic film maker. Her debut documentary short, Where’s Wilma? premiered at The Global Health Film Festival, London, in December 2023.

External activity

External Examiner, MA Menswear and Womenswear, London College of Fashion (2023-)

External Examiner, Critical Studies in Fashion Research, Fashion Business School, London College of Fashion (2023-)

External Examiner, MA Pattern and Garment Technology, London College of Fashion (2023-2024)

External Examiner, BA Fashion Branding and Communication, University of the Arts, Bournemouth (2018-2022)

External Examiner, BA Fashion Promotion and BA Journalism, Central Saint Martins (2013-2018)

External Advisor, BA Cordwainers Footwear, London College of Fashion (2023)

External Advisor, Northampton Art Gallery and Museum, (2017-2022)

Advisory Board Member, National Saturday Club (2023-)

Editorial Board, Sociology and Anthropology, Horizon Publishing

Peer Reviewer book proposals and books - Bloomsbury Academic and Routledge

Peer Review (conferences) – PLATE conference, International Conference on Sustainable Energy Education, IFFTI

Peer Review (journals) – Ethnography, Journal of Global Fashion Marketing

Peer Review (funding bids), EPSRC and Dutch Research Council

STEM Ambassador (2023-)

Nuffield Research Foundation Placement Provider for East Midlands (2022-)

Publications

  • Braithwaite N. 2018. FashionMap Situating Style in a Shifting Landscape. L. Petican, ed. Fashion and Contemporaneity, Brill Publishers.
  • Braithwaite, N. and Schlemann, A. 2018. 'Product Service Systems: A Viable Business Model for Fashion Brands? C. BECKER-LEIFHOLD and M. HEUER, eds., Eco-friendly and fair: fast fashion and consumer behavior. Sustainability in textiles . Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 132-143.
  • Braithwaite, N. 2018. Fashion, Fantasy, Power and Mystery: Interpreting Shoes through the Lens of Visual Culture. N. McCreesh and F. Carlotto Eds. Engaging with Fashion: Perspectives on Communication, Education and Business, Brill Publishers. Release date October 2018.

See all of Naomi Braithwaite's publications...

Press expertise

Naomi regularly writes for The Conversation. Her press expertise includes shoes, fashion consumption, fashion sustainability and luxury fashion.

Course(s) I teach on