Professor Alan McKinlay

Newcastle University Business School
5 Barrack Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom

Alan McKinlay at Newcastle University is an expert on work practices in twentieth-century European and American industry. He has published eight books, including an edited volume on Creative Labour: Working in the Creative Industries (2009). This skilled theoretician has used the work of Michel Foucault to analyze corporate strategy and industrial relations in the automobile, communications, and computer industries. His interdisciplinary research has appeared in history journals and management journals such as International Review of Social History, Industrial Relations Journal, Le Mouvement Social, Labor History Review, and International Journal of Human Resource Management. His recent work has focused on two areas: the history and contemporary experience of employers‘ organizations, and the role of industrial psychology in contemporary management practice. Scholarly expertise of this type has rarely, if ever, been applied to the study of the fashion business.

For 'The Enterprise of Culture, Professor McKinlay will focus on the idea of translation in the contemporary fashion business, developing case studies of George Davies, the designer-retailer who headed the NEXT chain in the 1980s and later launched the Per Una brand for Marks and Spencer, and of Mosaic, one of the leading global consumer classification systems. In this case, interviews with fashion practitioners will also be important.