School Uniforms

This edited volume brings together a new materialist approach to understanding the various legacies and controls being exercised through school uniforms. Through examining school uniform policies, the editors and their authors highlight the embodied choices that contribute to a socio-materialist understanding of democracy and social justice. Uniform policy plays a distinct role in setting the culture of compulsory school education and as such it constitutes a set of under-theorised school practices. This work thus brings together critical perspectives from education, sociology, cultural and postcolonial studies within an overarching analysis of how uniform imposes performances that have a formative effect on young people’s identities and economic positionality.

• School uniform
• dress codes
• gendered identities
• new materialism
• postcolonial legacy
• school policies
• social justice education

• School of Education, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

  Rachel Shanks, Ainsley Carnarvon

• School of Education and Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland, Ayr, UK

  Julie Ovington

• School of Education and Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley, UK

  Beth Cross

Rachel Shanks is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen, UK. She has been researching school uniform since 2019 and is particularly interested in how it can be made affordable, comfortable, rights-respecting and sustainable. This research includes school clothing grant in Scotland and school uniform banks. She leads interdisciplinary courses on sustainability and teaches research methods, in particular qualitative data analysis using software.

Julie Ovington is a Lecturer and Programme Leader at the University of the West of Scotland in the School of Education and Social Sciences. This work follows on from a career in family support within communities and in Nursery and Infant schools. Julie completed her doctorate at Northumbria University in 2019. Her thesis explored the affect of school readiness in the classroom based on the lived experiences of two-year-old children. The study drew on a range of theories and philosophies including materialism and posthumanism. She continues to research in early education and what it means to be an academic in creative ways.

Beth Cross is a Lecturer in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland, UK. She researches the interface between formal and informal learning contexts and is particularly interested in dialogic methods of exploring learner identities, strategies and trajectories. She has taught in the areas of community education, social policy and children’s services in England and Scotland and worked with a number of creative interdisciplinary projects that involve visual and dramatic arts in order to expand the modalities for deliberation and participation. 

Ainsley Carnarvon is a Researcher and Digital Education Strategic Programme Manager at the HMFC Innovation Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland. His work involves creating digital education opportunities for the youth of Edinburgh, with particular focus on BAME , neurodivergent, and other underrepresented groups in STEM. His research focus is in Curriculum and Pedagogy with special interest in Diversity and Inclusion and Post colonial education in the Caribbean.