This volume, co-edited by Sarah Cheang and Geraldine Biddle-Perry, brought together new essays by 18 authors on the cultural meanings of hair. The dynamic role of head and body hair for social expression is explored in this cross-cultural collection that encompasses fashion, film, art, history, literature, performance and consumer culture, with specific contributions by Sarah on the manipulation of hair in the production of racial difference. In 2009 she also co-organised with Geraldine-Biddle Perry the conference ‘Hair Stories: Practice, Culture, Theory’ (Victoria and Albert Museum/London College of Fashion), a unique event that brought international scholars of hair into dialogue with artists, hair stylists, curators, and film and TV make-up professionals.

Sinophilia – a love of Chinese things – was an important part of fashionable identities in the early twentieth century. This book, to be published by I.B. Tauris, offers a new theoretical approach to femininity, representations of the Orient, and Chinese-ness in Western spaces. Original interrelated case studies in fashion, textiles, retailing, interior design, collecting and pet-keeping explore the multifaceted meanings of fashion and China in Western society. The aim is to elucidate and evaluate the specific ways that notions of China were involved in the making of British homes and the clothing of Caucasian British bodies, articulating ideas about modernity and nation, empire, gender, race, class and sexuality.

This book, commissioned by Berg Publishers, presents a new critique of the meaning of fashion and its systems by foregrounding ethnicity. The sense of social belonging and individuality that fashion engenders can include ethnicity, yet often seems to transcend matters of race, nation and ethnicity through a set of cultural dynamics linked to globalisation and histories of cultural imperialism. The project challenges assumptions about ethnicity and fashion by re-examining the dichotomy of fashion and ethnic dress. As well as analysing original case studies, it brings together work on fashion and ethnicity from a range of disciplines to create a new overview of the key issues.

British society is an ageing one. This project, being conducted by a science and humanities multidisciplinary team, has the overarching aim of drawing positive attention to this extending part of our life cycle. A recently completed pilot project explored whether different approaches to the management of skin ageing produce measurable differences in the skin of women over 60, and affects narratives of life course. The next stage of this project will incorporate an artist/filmmaker to explore and document the key themes of self-esteem related to appearance, and open the project up to aesthetic considerations of femininity, identity, the body and the process of ageing.