Lee Barron has a BSc in Sociology from Northumbria University and (1995) and an MA in Cultural & Textual Studies from the University of Sunderland (1997). He received his PhD from the University of Sunderland in 2004. He was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Northumbria in the UK in 2004 where he taught in the Departments of Social Sciences and Media. He is now based in the School of Design at Northumbria where he teaches in the areas of fashion branding, marketing, and luxury brand management. His research interests cover subjects such as fashion, popular music, celebrity, tattooing, and culture-inspired design, and he is currently developing research in the areas of AI and smart technology. He has published in a number of international journals such as The Journal of Popular Culture, Postcolonial Studies, Fashion Theory, Celebrity Studies, Popular Music History, European Journal of Cultural Studies, the Journal of Modern Craft, Gothic Studies, and Fashion, and Style and Popular Culture. He has also contributed chapters to a number of edited book collections that include Popular Music and Film (2003), Terror Tracks (2009), The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV and History (2010), and Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures (2013). He is also the author of four sole-authored books: Social Theory in Popular Culture (2013), Celebrity Cultures (2015), Tattoo Culture: Theory and Contemporary Contexts (2017) and Tattoos and Popular Culture (2020).