Gaby Harris

I am a sociologist and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. My research interests are in cultural practice, inequality and identity formation. I research how relationships of power and inequality manifest in material relationships and consumption practices, with a specific focus on fashion and class.

My PhD research was funded by the ESRC, and explored how teenage girls navigate different social relationships through their wardrobe and consumption practices. My research illuminates how girls negotiate complex senses of self and identity on the terrain of fashion through different aspects of consuming clothes such as money and finance, forms of knowledge, management of judgements and understanding the body. My work offers a detailed qualitative analysis of what we can disentangle from girls’ social worlds through the study of fashion, and how it can inform broader sociological concerns.