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The Conversation

A history of shopping: how pop-ups, home delivery and fast fashion go back as far as the 1800s – podcast

Rachel Bowlby, UCL

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Rachel Bowlby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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University College London provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Women holding shopping baskets in front of a counter with a sign saying fresh meat self-service.
Image of shoppers at the self-service fresh meat cabinets in a Southampton branch of Sainsbury’s in 1954. Donald S. Herbert/Sainsbury archive, CC BY-NC-ND

This episode of The Conversation’s In Depth Out Loud podcast tells how the future of shopping was shaped by its past.

Rachel Bowlby, professor of comparative literature at UCL, explains how shopping and the high street continue to evolve. You can read the text version of her original article here.

The audio version is read by Jane Wing in partnership with Noa, News Over Audio. Listen to more articles from The Conversation, for free, on the Noa app.

This story came out of a project at The Conversation called Insights, which generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges. You can read more stories in the series here.

The music in In Depth Out Loud is Night Caves, by Lee Rosevere. In Depth Out Loud is produced by Gemma Ware.

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