About

I graduated from Warwick with a BA in Film and Literature, went to UEA to study for an MA in Film Studies, came back to Warwick for PhD…and stayed! I am co-founder of The Centre for Television Histories and collaborated with Dr Helen Wheatley on the recent, highly successful exhibition 'The Story of Children's Television, 1946 to Today' at the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery in Coventry. I was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘A History of Television for Women in Britain, 1947-1989’, running between Warwick and De Montfort University, 2010-2014, with Investigators Helen Wheatley (Warwick) and Helen Wood (Leicester University). The project brought together archival and audience research methods in order to map this untold history and explore women viewers’ memories of the television that has been addressed to them. The project was awarded the 2012 Arts Impact Award for public engagement with its Pop-Up TV Pop Shop in Coventry City Centre, and an anthology of essays Television for Women: New Directions, (co-edited with Helen Wheatley and Professor Helen Wood) will be out with Routledge in 2016. I serve on the editorial board of The Journal of Popular Television, Celebrity Studies and the BFI’s ‘TV Classics’ book series and recently served as a member of the academic reference group of the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value. With Dr Gemma Goodman (English), I ran a strand of investigation for the Commission on the funding of cultural production in Cornwall.

Research interests

My latest book is Hand-Crafted Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974 (Palgrave 2015). Picturing Cornwall, an interdisciplinary book on screen representations of Cornwall, which continues my interest in film, television and representation, but also draws on longstanding interests in art history and literature as well as in questions of region and representation, will be out with Exeter University Press in late 2017/early 2018. I have previously researched the enduring appeal of Audrey Hepburn with female fans, edited collections on film stardom and fashion and on feminism and popular culture, and have written about teen television drama in Britain and the USA. As a member of the Midlands Television Research Group, I have also been involved in research on lifestyle programming and makeover shows on British television and this continues in my work on the history of television for women project.

Selected publications

Books

Articles

• ‘Makeover takeover on British television’, Screen 41, 3: 299-314. 2000
• ‘"Having it Ally": popular television (post)-feminism’, Feminist Media Studies 2, 2: 231-249, 2002.
• ‘Glamorous witchcraft: gender and magic in teen film and television’, Screen 43, 4: 403-422, 2002.
• ‘Inform, Educate, Regulate: Teenagers and Television Drama in Britain, 1978-1982’, in H. Wheatley (ed.) Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography, London: I. B. Tauris, 2007.
• ‘Is Archiving a Feminist issue? Historical Research and the Past, Present and Future of Television Studies’, Cinema Journal 47, 3: 152-158, 2008. (co-authored with Helen Wheatley)
• ‘Marguerite Patten, Television Cookery and the construction of post-war British femininity on television’, in Stacy Gillis and Joanne Hollows (eds) Feminism, Domesticity and Popular Culture, Routledge, 2008.
• ‘A Landscape of Desire: Cornwall as Romantic Setting in Love Story and Ladies in Lavender’, in Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams (eds) The British Woman’s Picture, Routledge, 2009.
• '"It's a wild country. Wild...passionate...strange": Poldark and the place-image of Cornwall', Visual Culture in Britain 14,2: 218-237, 2013.
• 'Women at the edge: encounters with the Cornish coast in British film and television', Continuum 27, 5: 644-662, 2013.

Teaching and supervision

I teach British and US television and film, with particular interests in television history and criticism, region, gender and representation and teen film and television.

In 2015-16 I am teaching Television History and Criticism (BA Year 2/3 option) and TV History and Aesthetics (MA Option)

I am particularly interested in supervising graduate work on questions of gender and representation in popular film and television, on teen film and television and on television history.

I have supervised doctoral research on postfeminist formations of masculinity in film and television (Dr Lauren Thompson), road horror (Dr Finn Ballard), Japanese magical girl animation (Dr Akiko Sugawa Shimada), music in teen film and television (Dr Faye Woods), digital television (Dr James Bennett) and on women’s memories of television viewing (Dr Hazel Collie, with Professor Helen Wood, Leicester). I am currently supervising work on identity in young adult fiction (Leah Phillips, with Dr Emma Francis, English at Warwick) and on television costume (Joette Wolthuis, with Professor Stella Bruzzi)

Administrative roles

• Director, Centre for Television History, Heritage and Memory Research
• PhD Admissions Tutor for Department of Film & Television
• Warwick Commission Academic Reference Group
• Working Party on New Warwick Liberal Arts Degree
• Quality Assurance Working Group
• Warwick Volunteers Steering Group
• Departmental Impact Officer

National roles and professional associations

• Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'A History of Television for Women in Britain, 1947-1989'
• Member of the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value
• Member of the Midlands Television Research Group