Dr Elaine Ritch
Reader in Fashion, Marketing and Sustainability
Department of Fashion, Marketing, Tourism and Events
Elaine is a Reader in Fashion, Marketing and Sustainability at Glasgow Caledonian University and she is the programme leader for BA(hons) International Marketing. She leads on two modules: New Perspectives in Critical Marketing and Consumer Society (level 4) and Marketing and Design and Creativity (level 2) as well as leading the research group ‘Consumer Lifestyles and Experiences’, which is underpinned by the Sustainable Development Goals.
Elaine has presented her research at international conferences and has published in international journals and book chapters. She supervises a number of PhD candidates who are exploring facets of fashion consumer behaviour; this includes the Fashion Detox, balancing tensions between religiosity and fashion identities from a Muslim perspective and Gen X’s involvement in fashion. Elaine’s more recent research explores how children are educated on sustainability in the school setting through Eco-School activities, using visualisation methods.
She is also investigating retail values to better understand value trade-offs between online and high street retailers, among allegations that UK employees experience workplace exploitation. Her co-edited book, New Perspectives in Critical Marketing and Consumer Society, was published in March 2021.
Previously Elaine was a Teaching Fellow in Fashion Marketing at Herriot Watt University and a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Stirling. She completed her doctoral thesis in 2012 at Queen Margaret University; in her thesis, she explored how professionally working mothers interpreted and practised notions of sustainability when purchasing and disposing of fashion in the family setting. Prior to that, Elaine was a retail manager for around a decade, working for Habitat, Bhs, Jones the Bootmaker and Liberty.