Keywords
advertising, capitalism, consumer culture, consumption, design, display, ethnography, fashion, material culture, objects, practices, retail, shopping, space, visual culture, visual merchandising, visual methodologies
Research Areas
Media and Cultural Studies, Sociology
Carla Banks
Research Student
Bowland North
Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster
United Kingdom
LA1 4YN
Location: B118
Affiliations
My principal research interests lie in the field of consumer culture touching on themes of ?the material', ?the visual' and consumption. In particular, I am interested in work around shopping, retailing, retail environments, visual merchandising and display practices.
Thesis Title
Practicing Display: The Visual ? Material Making of Retail Spaces
Thesis Outline
I am an ESRC 1+3 funded student. My doctoral research is an ethnographic enquiry into the visual and material making of retail displays based on research with practitioners in the British department store, John Lewis. Using a number of methods including, participant observation, interviews and photography, I seek to understand how retail display practitioners (visual merchandisers) design and implement display schemes. I argue that analysing ?display practice' is essential to understanding retail environments and specifically, the notion of creating and enacting a brand's ?handwriting' through display practice is central to processes of consumer culture. I consider what kinds of shopping environments are constituted by particular display practices and discuss in detail the various ways in which visual merchandising is implicated in the visual ? material making of retail spaces.
Supervised By
Dr. Anne Cronin and Dr. Tim Dant
Current Teaching
I am currently a seminar tutor on Sociology 209 Consumer Culture and Advertising
Qualifications
BA Sociology (First Class with Honours) MA Sociological Research (Distinction) Supported Learning Award in Higher Education. All attained at Lancaster University.
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