Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén's research addresses the historical cross-industry relations between Hollywood and the fashion industry. She is particularly interested in studying how Hollywood's intermedial reach helped propel the international fashion system through the global circulation of cultural and economic capital. Departing from the study of discourses originating in public relations, advertising, marketing, and other institutional practices, Castaldo Lundén seeks to understand how ideas travel into popular culture and manifest in social and cultural phenomena. Her work contributes to the pool of knowledge about the United States's rise to power in the global arena through the circulation of popular culture to promote their values and propel consumer culture during the 20th Century.

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Her research is heavily driven by archival sources and integrates fashion, cinema, and media history. Her latest book, Fashion on the Red Carpet: A History of the Oscars, Fashion, and Globalisation (EUP, 2021), historicizes the Academy Awards' red-carpet phenomenon, tracing the liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions to explain how public relations campaigns and the media articulated fashion discourses around the Oscars leading to the institutionalization of the red-carpet as a global fashion media event. 

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In 2024, she was awarded the prestigious Rettig Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities for "her research on the fashion industry and the working functions of the film medium, and on social analysis in relation to fashion, film and television." Accoding to the press release, "Castaldo Lundén's research, in its wealth of perspective and power, is fundamental to the subject's identity and has given perspective on the possibilities of fashion studies." (Kungl. Vitterhetsakademin 2024)

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