I am a feminist writer, academic and curator who fell in love with cinema as a child (lots of late nights getting to stay up and watch 50s Hollywood movies with my grandparents saw to that) and now write and talk about film whenever possible. I'll watch anything from blockbuster kids' films to artists' video, and British wartime melodramas to indie flicks. And Star Wars, of course. You can find my CV below.
I am a freelance critic and broadcaster and regularly contribute to discussions about film and the media industries for various outlets, including Sight & Sound and the BBC.
I am also Lecturer in Film and Television Studies in Glasgow, where I have been based since 2016. I am programme director of the Masters in Film Curation, and also teach film history at undergraduate level. My research aims to create feminist counter-histories of cinema, and tends to focus on film and media technologies - such as my last project, which explored the connections between cinema and transport in British culture (From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity). My current project explores the use of code, such as software and algorithms, to produce and distribute the Star Wars franchise (Decoding Star Wars) and I am also writing a new history and analysis of The Empire Strikes Back for the BFI Film Classics series. In all of my work, I am interested in thinking about how gender, race, sexuality and class inform visual culture and our experiences of it. You can read more about my research and academic work here.
Finally, I am the founder of the Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival, which launched in November 2018 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts. The biannual festival provides a platform for women (including non-binary people and trans women) to share film, performance (theatre, dance and spoken word poetry), music, and other visual arts in the city.
I am a freelance critic and broadcaster and regularly contribute to discussions about film and the media industries for various outlets, including Sight & Sound and the BBC.
I am also Lecturer in Film and Television Studies in Glasgow, where I have been based since 2016. I am programme director of the Masters in Film Curation, and also teach film history at undergraduate level. My research aims to create feminist counter-histories of cinema, and tends to focus on film and media technologies - such as my last project, which explored the connections between cinema and transport in British culture (From Steam to Screen: Cinema, the Railways and Modernity). My current project explores the use of code, such as software and algorithms, to produce and distribute the Star Wars franchise (Decoding Star Wars) and I am also writing a new history and analysis of The Empire Strikes Back for the BFI Film Classics series. In all of my work, I am interested in thinking about how gender, race, sexuality and class inform visual culture and our experiences of it. You can read more about my research and academic work here.
Finally, I am the founder of the Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival, which launched in November 2018 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts. The biannual festival provides a platform for women (including non-binary people and trans women) to share film, performance (theatre, dance and spoken word poetry), music, and other visual arts in the city.
A little more about me...
EXPERIENCE
2016-: Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow
2015-2016: Lecturer in British Cinema, University of East Anglia
2014-2015: Teaching Fellow, UCL
EDUCATION
2010-2014: PhD Film Studies, UCL
2008-2009: MA Film Studies, UCL
2005-2008: BA Hons Media Arts, Royal Holloway
PUBLICATIONS
You can find a full list of of my writing for general and academic audiences, as well as media appearances, under Media.
AWARDS and GRANTS
2018-2020: Global Challenges Research Grants (co-investigator on cross-disciplinary projects supporting indigenous communities in their endeavours to assess and record climate change and stabilise video archives in Mexico)
2018: Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund – (‘Feminism in the Scottish Film Industries: Changing Attitudes Toward Gender in Filmmaking and Criticism’)
2017: Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (What Made a Moving Image: A Material, Imperial History of Early British Film Apparatus)
2016: Philip M Taylor Routledge – IAMHIST Prize for Best Article by a Junior Scholar
2011: UCL Graduate School Gay Clifford Bursary for Outstanding Women Students
2010-2013: AHRC studentship, UCL
2010: Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies Award (with Jann Matlock and Lee Grieveson)
2009: UCL Grand Challenges Award
INVITED TALKS
2019: ‘Diversity Quotas in the Film Industry,’ University of Groningen, Netherlands, June 5-7.
2019: Gender, Responsibility, and the Canon symposium, University of Glasgow, May 9.
2019: ‘Star Wars by Numbers: Rethinking Data and Identity Politics in the Franchise,’ Newcastle University, January 16.
2019: ‘Clone Wars: The Gender and Racial Politics of Copying and Reproduction in the Star Wars Films,’ Edinburgh Napier University, February 6.
2018: ‘Doing Feminism in a Man’s World (Wide Web),’ Off-Script Conference, McGill University, Canada, November 3-5.
2018: 'Decoding Gender in Star Wars,' McGill University, March 21.
2018: ‘Women and Nursing Onscreen in the First World War,’ University of Southampton, February 13.
2017: ‘Rethinking the Panicking Audience: Class, Urbanism and the Train Effect in Early British Cinema,’ University of Warwick, March 1.
2016: ‘The Audience of Train Effect Films,’ Institute of Historical Research Film History Seminar, October 20.
RECENT PRESENTATIONS
2019: ‘Star Wars Diversity Data and the Fan Backlash,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, USA, March 13-17.
2018: ‘Fuck the Canon: Centralising Women’s Screen Media in the Post #MeToo Classroom,’ Women’s Film and Television History Network, University of Southampton, May 23-25.
2018: ‘Attacking the Clones: Decoding the Woman Problem in Star Wars,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Toronto, March 14-18.
2017: ‘Me and Mabel: Rewriting Mabel Normand’s Past as a Feminist Film Historian,’ Women and the Silent Screen, Shanghai, June 16-18.
2017: ‘Class and the Train’s Effect: Reinvestigating the Panicking Audience,’ British Silent Film Festival Symposium, April 6-7.
2017: ‘The Afterlife Onscreen: Cinema and Spiritualism in the First World War,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, March 21-26.
2016: ‘All Quiet on the Home Front: Evacuee Children and a Silent Cinema Revival in the Second World War,’ British Silent Film Festival Symposium, King’s College London, April 28-29.
2016: ‘Sweethearts of the Skies: Gender, National Identity and the “Aviatrix”,’ (with Rachel Kapelke-Dale), Flying Through the Thirties, UCL and Croydon Aerodrome Museum, April 16.
2016: ‘“Away from the Village, the Cinema, Everything”: Film Entertainments for Evacuees in the Second World War,’ Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Atlanta, March 30-April 3.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
2019: Short film for Govanhill Picturehouse restoration project, Glasgow
2019: ‘Reclaim the Frame,’ Bird’s Eye View Glasgow Launch, Women’s Library, May 2.
2017: ‘Travellers in Two Lands: Revisiting Britain’s Railway Cinemas,’ Cample Line Arts Centre, Scotland, November 26.
2017: Public talk and discussion about women projectionists in conjunction with the AHRC-University of Warwick Projection Project, Flatpack Festival, Birmingham, April 9.
2017: Talk on Suffragette for Glasgow Film Festival Schools’ Week, Glasgow, February 9.
2016: ‘First World War Ambulance Trains Onscreen - Then and Now,’ National Railway Museum, September 10.
TEACHING
I am programme director for the MSc in Film Curation. I convene three courses: Materials of Film Curation, which explores film apparatuses, formats, archives and ephemera; Practices of Film Curation, which offers a space to produce creative work; and the Work Placement, via partnerships with various festivals and archives.
I also teach undergraduate film and TV history. In 2017, I redesigned the course in the wake of the #MeToo movement to only screen films directed by women. The screening list includes women of colour, queer women and trans women and encourages students to challenge white, patriarchal canon formation, and to think about the history of the screen from new perspectives.
LEADERSHIP and EDITORIAL
2019: Co-chair, Women's Caucus, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
2018-: Contributing editor, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture; special issue editor, Early Popular Visual Culture
2016-2019: Co-Chair, War and Media Studies group, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
2018: External reviewer, University of South Wales
2017-2018: Conference programme committee, Society for Cinema and Media Studies