About

I hold a First Class BA in Film and Literature, an MA For Research in Film and Television Studies, and earned my PhD in Film and Television Studies in 2016 - all from The Department of Film and Television Studies at Warwick. My doctoral thesis is concerned with theories of film authorship and postmodern cinema.

In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I am also the department's Widening Participation and Outreach OfficerLink opens in a new window.

I am the official point of contact for SMLC Joint Honours with Film Students and students from other departments taking options in Film and Television Studies.

Current Teaching

For the 2024 - 2025 academic year I will be convening core and optional modules at a number of levels. In the Autumn Term I will be co-convening the First Year Film Studies core module Visual Cultures with Jake Edwards. In the Spring I'll be convening the second year Optional module Transnational Action Cinema, and contributing to the new optional MA module Screening Bodies alongside Julie Lobalzo Wright, Jake Edwards, and Polina Zelmanova.

In the Autumn, I'll also be convening Film Analysis and MethodsLink opens in a new window, a core module for SMLC students on Film Studies Joint Honours courses and open to students on other degrees as an Outside Option.

I have been a regular contributor to the IATLLink opens in a new window module Genetics: Science and SocietyLink opens in a new window 

Research Interests

• Film Theory; particularly theories of film authorship, genre, and issues of representation (especially as this relates to genre cinema)
• Contemporary Hollywood Cinema; specialising in action cinema and post-classical style
• Horror Cinema; with particular interest in British Horror cinema, definitions of the gothic, folk horror, and the relationship between horror and science-fiction
• Film-philosophy; including R.G. Collingwood's philosophy of art, Nietzsche (particularly depictions of eternal recurrence), postmodern aesthetics, post-structuralism, and representations of the posthuman and non-human (particularly in relation to Artificial Intelligence, the demonic, and the spectral)

Research Disclaimer

As a teaching fellow, I am employed on a Teaching Only Contract. Before this I have had various hourly paid sessional teaching contracts and a professional services job (managing widening participation and study abroad). This means that presenting and publishing research does not feature as part of my workload allocation, nor has it been since I completed my PhD. While I do receive the benefits of institutional affiliation, library access, and supportive colleagues, I do not receive monetary support from the university for my research, and any research I do undertake must be conducted in my spare time rather than in working hours.

Publications

• ‘Deconstructing Depth: Proximity and Contemplation in Déjà Vu’, Film-Philosophy Special Issue: The Surfaces of Film-Philosophy, 22:2, (2018) 240-260 [available here]Link opens in a new window
• ‘Introduction: The Surfaces of Film-Philosophy’, Film-Philosophy Special Issue: The Surfaces of Film-Philosophy, 22:2, (2018) 143-147 (co-author) [available here]Link opens in a new window
• ‘In Celebration of Her Wickedness?: Critical Intertextuality and the Female Vampire in Byzantium’, in Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film, edited by Samantha Holland, Robert Shail, and Steven Gerrard (Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 2019) [link to publisher website]Link opens in a new window
• 'Queer Cinema' in The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas, edited by J.P. Telotte, (Oxford University Press, 2023) (co-author) [available here]Link opens in a new window
• '"Knowing Me Alan Partridge, Knowing You Steve Coogan": Character-Brand Franchising and Metafictional Stardom' (co-author) [forthcoming]
• 'Not Actual Play: Examples of Play and Expectations of Experience in TRPGs' (co-author) [forthcoming]

Conference Papers

• 'Tony Scott's Déjà Vu (2006): Looking Again at Spectacle, Style, and Substance'
  Film-Philosophy Conference, 20th – 22nd June 2015, Oxford University
• 'In Celebration of Her Wickedness? Critical Intertextuality and the Female Vampire in Byzantium'
  Fear 2000 Conference, 21st – 22nd April 2017, Sheffield Hallam University
• 'Don’t Call it a Horror Film: The Uses of the Gothic in Crimson Peak'
  Gothic Feminisms Conference, 24th – 26th May 2017, University of Kent Canterbury
• 'The Postmodern Auteur: A New Wave Legacy'
  The American New Wave: A Retrospective, 4th – 6th July 2017, Bangor University
• ‘Robotic Revenants and Machine Ghosts: Posthuman Hauntings in Transcendence and Be Right Back’
  CATH Postgraduate Conference: ‘It is true, we shall be monsters’: new perspectives on horror, science fiction and the monstrous onscreen, 13th June 2018, De Montfort University,
• ‘Gothic, Folk, and Post: Labels and Value in Horror Cinema’
  International Gothic association Conference 2018: Gothic Hybridities: Interdisciplinary, Multimodal and Transhistorical Approaches, July 31st–August 3rd 2018, Manchester Metropolitan University
• ‘Acting Like He has Genuine Emotions: Human and Inhuman Characters in 2001: A Space Odyssey’
  Character as Character: Understanding and Appreciating People in films, 13th October 2018, University of Bristol 2018
• ‘“The Field … The Field … It’s Covered in Blood!”: Watership Down as Folk Horror’
  The legacy of Watership Down: Animals, Adaptation, Animation, 10th November 2018, The University of Warwick
• 'Female Labour and Algorithmic Horror in Cam’
  Gothic Feminisms Conference, 2nd - 3rd May 2019, University of Kent Canterbury
• 'Views from Hills: Folk Horror as a Mode of Seeing'
  Folk Horror in the 21st Century, 5th - 6th September 2019, Falmouth University
• 'Happy Death Day, Dionysis: Nietzsche and the Final Girl'
  International Gothic Conference 2022: Gothic Interruptions, 26th - 29th July, Trinity College Dublin
• '“These Woods Are No Place for Children!”: Reconsidering Children’s Folk Horror'
  Fear 2000 Horror Uncaged, 21st - 22nd July and 27th - 29th July 2023, Sheffield Hallam University
• '“That goes in the butt bank”: Tina Belcher and The Horny Teen in a Queer Time and Place'
  Sex in Contemporary Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference 4th - 6th October 2023, University of Warwick and Online

Memberships and Associations

I am a member of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSSLink opens in a new window)

I am a member of the International Gothic Assoiciation (IGA)Link opens in a new window

I am a Warwick LGBTUA+ supporterLink opens in a new window

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