Dr. Frances Smith is an Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Sussex's School of Media, Arts and Humanities. She holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick (2013), an MA in Management from Durham University (2008), and a Master of Modern Languages in French/Italian from Manchester University (2007). Her research focuses on teen cinema, female authorship, Hollywood and European cinema, and gender studies, with current work on Céline Sciamma's Girlhood. She authored Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie (2017) and co-edited Refocus: The Films of John Hughes (2021). Teaching includes convening Analysing Film, American Teen Cinema, and Working with Film modules. She has taught Gender and Representation, British Cinema, and Study Skills. Her awards include Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (2016). Active in PhD supervision focusing on teen cinema, female authorship, and gender in cinema. Publications span over 25 articles/chapters addressing topics like queer youth representation, transatlantic media comparisons, and directorial authorship in John Hughes and Amy Heckerling films. Research explores intersections of gender, space, and cultural identity in global popular cinema.
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)United Kingdom
Clare Hemmings is a Professor of Feminist Theory at the Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she has been since 1999. Her work bridges feminist theory, queer studies, and sexuality studies, with a focus on how these fields are institutionalized and narrated. She holds a PhD and has authored seminal works like Why Stories Matter (2011) and Considering Emma Goldman (2018), which explore feminist historiography and political ambivalence. Her research emphasizes interdisciplinary methods, including archival interventions and creative writing to challenge dominant narratives. Hemmings’ research interests include feminist epistemology, queer of color critique, and anarchist thought. She has been active in countering 'anti-gender' movements and is currently developing a project on 'Feminist Knowledge Struggles.' Her work is marked by attention to form, affect, and the intersection of nationalism, feminism, and sexuality. She supervises PhD students Senel Wanniarachchi and Rawda Elaskary and has received the FWSA Book Prize 2012 for Why Stories Matter . Hemmings’ articles span feminist theory, political mobilizations, and affect studies. Her recent work engages with family memory archives and decolonial methodologies. She is a prolific scholar, contributing to journals like Memory Studies , Feminist Studies , and Radical Philosophy . Her interdisciplinary approach integrates literary criticism, sociology, and activism, offering transformative frameworks for feminist praxis.
Jack Bowman is a Teaching Fellow in Modern History at the University of Warwick, School of Arts, Department of History. He teaches modules such as "Britain in the Twentieth Century" and "Race, Racism, and Resistance in Modern Britain," and serves as an Academic Writing Adviser and Teaching Representative for the Social Inclusion and Diversity Committee. PhD in History, University of Warwick (2019–2023) MA in Modern History, University of Warwick (2018–2019) BA (Hons) in History, University of Warwick (2015–2018) His research focuses on anti-colonial print cultures, particularly within the British Empire and the Pan-African movement. He specializes in book history, global histories of empire, queer histories, and visual media. His work explores the role of political publishing in anti-colonial activism and the intellectual networks of figures like V. K. Krishna Menon and Ras T. Makonnen. The recent publications and presentations reflect a strong engagement with transnational anti-colonial movements, Black radicalism, and the material culture of print. His work spans historical biography, archival research, and critical reviews of scholarship in visual culture, decolonization, and global knowledge systems. He frequently contributes to public history through outreach and digital media. University of Warwick, History Department Doctoral Scholarship (2019–2023) Jack Bowman advises undergraduate students and contributes to academic governance through committee roles. He is also involved in public engagement, including outreach to school children as the historian for George Padmore and creating educational resources for GCSE and A-Level students. He is a Convenor of the Modern British History Reading Group and a member of the Global History and Culture Centre and Manuscript and Print Cultures Research Group at Warwick. He is currently working on a new book project on the League Against Imperialism and maintains an active public presence through Twitter (@DrJackBowman) and podcast contributions, such as with Shoga Films on the Harlem Renaissance.
Dr. Laura McMahon is an Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics , University of Cambridge. She is currently on sabbatical leave and will return in Easter Term 2024. Her research explores intersections between film and philosophy , with a focus on French and Francophone cinema , decolonial approaches , feminist theory , and ecocritical perspectives . Dr. McMahon’s work examines how contemporary feminist filmmakers like Onyeka Igwe and Khady Sylla engage with archives to reframe history through speculative reimagining . She also investigates ecological themes in Claire Denis’s films and the ethics of animality in global art cinema. Her monograph Animal Worlds: Film, Philosophy and Time (2019) and edited collections like Animal Life and the Moving Image (2015) highlight her contributions to debates on nonhuman representation and deconstructive aesthetics . Her recent publications analyze documentary practices , postcolonial archives , and critical repurposing in moving image work. She welcomes inquiries from MPhil and PhD students working on related topics. Her teaching and research are affiliated with the Cambridge Film and Screen initiative and the Cambridge Italian Research Network (CIRN).
Johnny Golding is a Professor at the Royal College of Art (RCA), School of Arts & Humanities. His career spans roles such as Director of the Centre for Fine Art Research at Birmingham City University, Professor of Philosophy in the Visual Arts & Communication Technologies (2000–2012), and honorary Professorship in Philosophy and Imaging at Dundee School of Art (2009). Born in New York, he holds a PhD from the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge. Education : - PhD in Philosophy from the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge. - Earlier studies in Toronto and New York. Research Interests : Golding’s work explores post-Newtonian analytics, new materialisms, and the erotics of sense as 'radical matter.' His interdisciplinary approach bridges art, philosophy, and 'wild sciences' like AI, robotics, and quantum theory. Key themes include data proliferation's societal impact, emergent systems, and the interplay between art and technology. Recent Articles & Projects : Focus on Data Loam (2020), exploring future knowledge systems through art and science collaborations. Recent works address radical empathy, distributed intelligence, and the ethics of AI. His 2018 opera Entanglement: The Opera and installations like Of The Thick and the Raw exemplify his practice-led philosophy. Grants & Leadership : - Led the Data Loam project (FWF-PEEK funded), involving over 20 artists and scholars. - PI for AiDesign Labs on generative AI at RCA. Labs & Collaborations : - Radical Matter Lab (2017–2018), a pedagogical experiment at RCA. - Collaborations with institutions like the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the British Library.
Rachel Morley is an Associate Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London. She holds a BA in French Language and Literature from the University of Oxford (1992), followed by BA, MA, and PhD degrees from UCL (1999, 2001, 2011). Her roles include Academic Director of Education and Student Experience at SSEES (2022–2027) and Co-Convenor of the UCL SSEES Cinema Research Group. Dr. Morley's research focuses on Cinema studies Cultural studies Feminist and queer theory Literary studies with emphasis on Soviet/Russian cinema, gender representation, and film historiography. She held a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2020–2022) for her project on female subjectivity in contemporary Russian cinema. Her teaching spans Russian cinema, poetry, language, and translation. Past roles include Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at SSEES (1999–2009) and lecturer at the University of Cambridge (2006, 2008). She has also supported international students as SSEES International and Affiliate Tutor (2014–2018). Key Achievements: Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2016) Her work bridges film, literature, and cultural history, emphasizing underrepresented narratives and feminist perspectives in Russian and Soviet cinema.
Dr Olga Petri is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. She is a Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Geography (Part II) at Jesus College, and a Leverhulme/Newton Trust Early Career Research Fellow. Her research bridges cultural and historical geography, queer studies, and more-than-human geographies, with a focus on urban modernity in non-Western contexts. Born in St Petersburg, Olga holds a BA and MA in Geography from Saint-Petersburg State University, an MSc in Urban Studies from University College London (merit), and a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge. Olga's research explores four key areas: Queer Geographies in authoritarian urban spaces, More-than-Human Geographies analyzing human-animal relationships, Russian Arctic Studies examining environmental and geopolitical transformations, and Migration Urbanism studying cities as hubs for political refugees. Her work on Beastly St Petersburg and Winged Worlds reconfigures urban history through animal and queer lenses. Scientific awards include the Leverhulme/Newton Trust Early Career Research Fellowship and a 2020 shortlisting for Student-Led Teaching Award . She is a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College since 2018. Olga leads postdoctoral research on human-animal dynamics in imperial Russia. She supervises graduate students in cultural/historical geography and urban studies. Her work features in Vital Geographies research group at Cambridge.
Dr. Heather Inwood serves as University Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture within the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity Hall, maintaining dual institutional affiliations that support her teaching and research activities across undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Her educational background includes a BA in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge (Trinity Hall), followed by advanced studies at Tsinghua University and Peking University, culminating in a PhD in modern Chinese literature from SOAS, University of London in 2008. Prior academic appointments include Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University (2008-2013) and Lecturer in Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester before returning to Cambridge in 2016. Professor Inwood's research program investigates the dynamic interactions between digital media and literary production in contemporary China, with particular focus on poetry communities, genre fiction, and transmedia storytelling. Her work bridges traditional literary analysis with digital humanities approaches, examining how online platforms transform authorship, reception, and cultural value. She has pioneered scholarship on internet poetry scenes, demonstrating their vitality despite public perceptions of poetry's decline in modern China. Her publication trajectory reveals a clear evolution from early work on poetry communities ( Verse Going Viral: China's New Media Scenes , 2014) toward broader investigations of digital narrative forms, game studies, and Sinophone cyberspace. Recent publications increasingly engage with science fiction, transmedia storytelling, and the algorithmic structures shaping literary production, reflecting both the changing digital landscape and her expanding methodological toolkit. Professor Inwood actively supervises five PhD students working on diverse projects spanning Misty poetry, queer narratives, gender studies, and poetic animality, demonstrating her commitment to nurturing next-generation scholarship in Chinese literary studies. Her research has been supported by British Academy Small Grants and similar funding mechanisms that enable sustained fieldwork and publication. Her teaching responsibilities include undergraduate courses on East Asian media and popular culture, Modern Chinese texts, and Modern Chinese literature, connecting classroom instruction directly to her research expertise. She also maintains public engagement through Chinese-language columns for BBC China and other media outlets, bridging academic and public discourse on contemporary Chinese culture.
Dr. Doyle D. Calhoun serves as University Assistant Professor of Francophone Postcolonial Studies within the Department of French at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, University of Cambridge, where he is also a Fellow of Peterhouse College. His scholarly profile spans African and Caribbean literary studies, cinema analysis, and historical sociolinguistics with a focus on resistance narratives. His educational trajectory includes a Ph.D. in French from Yale University (2022), an M.A. in Linguistics from KU Leuven, and undergraduate studies in Linguistics and French Literature at Boston College. Additional academic development occurred through residencies at Fondation Camargo (Cassis) and Bibliothèque Marmottan (Paris). Calhoun’s research centers on Francophone postcolonial resistance, particularly suicidal acts against French colonialism as documented in The Suicide Archive (2024). His work excavates silenced histories of Atlantic slavery, abolition movements, and Négritude philosophy through literary and cinematic archives, emphasizing Senegalese and Caribbean contexts. He explores how contemporary writers reconstruct erased narratives of enslaved resistance through transmedia practices. His recent publications reveal a methodological convergence between literary analysis, historical recovery, and decolonial theory. Articles frequently address archival silences in colonial documentation while examining how contemporary artists reimagine resistance through linguistic innovation, cinematic storytelling, and embodied protest. Key thematic clusters include the weaponization of silence, subversive uses of missionary linguistics, and the politics of memory in postcolonial contexts. 2024 Malcolm Bowie Prize (Society for French Studies) 2024 William R. Parker Prize (Modern Language Association) 2021 Ralph Cohen Prize (New Literary History) 2016 Vivien Law Prize (Henry Sweet Society) Calhoun actively mentors graduate students in African/Caribbean literatures and cinema studies, with current projects including Africa after 1848 and Florence . His grant history features academic residencies at Fondation Camargo and Bibliothèque Marmottan, alongside a 2021 scholarship from the latter institution. Public engagement includes the 2025 La Noire de... film symposium and contributions to Los Angeles Review of Books and Salon . He contributes to the Cambridge Language Collective and Polyglossia Magazine while organizing events through Peterhouse. His 2025 podcast appearances on Stegi Radio and New Books Network demonstrate active knowledge dissemination beyond traditional academic channels.
Shannon Mathieu serves as a Teaching Fellow in International Security at the School of Politics and International Studies (PAIS), University of Warwick. Her administrative roles include: Deputy Director of Undergraduate Studies Joint Undergraduate Courses Director for Economics, Politics and International Studies (EPAIS), History and Politics, Philosophy and Politics, and Politics, International Studies and Global Sustainable Development PAIS Undergraduate Study Skills lead (Term 1) She teaches PO207: Politics of the USA, PO382: Vigilant State: Understanding Secret Intelligence, and PO3A7: Gender, Race and Militarism for the 2025-26 academic year. Her research critically examines international security through feminist IR theory, focusing on United Nations policy frameworks. Key interests include the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), gendered constructions of vulnerability, non-military masculinities in institutional culture, and discursive power dynamics in humanitarian interventions. Her work exposes how protection narratives reinforce patriarchal structures within global security governance. Recent publications analyze evolving gender-security intersections in UN interventions, revealing persistent masculine norms in R2P frameworks while exploring pedagogical innovations using cultural texts. Her scholarship demonstrates consistent thematic progression toward deconstructing gendered power hierarchies in international security institutions, with emerging work examining burden-sharing dynamics in protection mandates.
Akanksha Mehta is a Lecturer in Gender, Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London , where she co-directs the Centre for Feminist Research. She joined Goldsmiths in September 2018 after lecturing at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex (2016-2018). Research Focus: Intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and everyday politics/violence; affective and material structures in nationalist movements; decolonial pedagogies. Key Projects: Co-founded the 'Mind the BAME Gap' initiative at Sussex; ongoing book project on right-wing women's mobilizations. Recognition: Recipient of the EISA Best Dissertation Award (2018) and Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize (2016). Publication Trends: Her work spans feminist critiques of Hindutva, queer rights in post-377 India, ethnographic analyses of right-wing women, and decolonial pedagogical frameworks. Recent outputs engage with racial justice in universities, affect theory, and visual sociology. Scientific Awards: Best Dissertation Award, EISA (2018) Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize, ISA (2016) Collaborative Work: Engages with decolonial visual practices, collective complaint mechanisms in academia, and intergenerational feminist dialogues through the podcast 'The F Less Travelled'.
Dr. Ewan Jones is Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of English and a Fellow at Downing College, where he serves as Director of Studies for Part II. He completed his BA, MPhil, and PhD at King's College, Cambridge, and was previously Thole Research Fellow at Trinity Hall. His educational background includes comprehensive training in English literature at Cambridge, with specialization in nineteenth-century literary studies. His academic journey reflects deep engagement with both traditional literary scholarship and innovative computational approaches to textual analysis. Dr. Jones's research concentrates on poetics, embodied cognition, and computational approaches to intellectual history. His work fundamentally questions how we understand 'close reading' not as interpretation but as a specific cognitive practice. He explores how aesthetic phenomenology can illuminate historical reading communities, develops pedagogical routines to de-habituate standard attention modes, and seeks constructive engagement between computational analysis and traditional reading practices. His scholarship bridges literary studies with cognitive science, demonstrating how rhythm, attention, and cognition intersect in literary form. His research trajectory shows increasing focus on attentional practices in reading, with recent work examining group attention practices and rhythm in Victorian poetry. The computational dimension of his work has grown steadily, moving from individual textual analysis to large-scale corpus studies through projects like the Concept Lab. Fulbright Scholar Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2021/22) on 'Close Reading as Attentional Practice' Residential fellow at the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study Visiting fellow at Ludwig Maximilian Universität Visiting fellow at Pomona College Dr. Jones supervises doctoral work on diverse topics including 'radical conservatism' in Victorian poetry, queer theory and historical poetics, Wagner reception in Anglophone poetry, morphogenetic conceptions of form, and metre and exact measurement. His interdisciplinary collaborations include work with Phyllis Weliver on digitizing Tennyson manuscripts and with Peter de Bolla on computational concept analysis projects that have secured significant research funding. He has developed innovative teaching approaches that integrate cognitive science with literary analysis. He co-founded and participates in the Concept Lab, an interdisciplinary project developing open-source computational resources for historical dataset analysis. This initiative has fostered collaborations across humanities and computer science disciplines, creating tools that bridge traditional literary scholarship with digital methods. His work with the Princeton Prosody Archive demonstrates his commitment to building scholarly infrastructure for rhythm and meter studies.
Professor George Palattiyil is a Personal Chair of Social Work and Refugee Studies at the University of Edinburgh , with a focus on forced migration, HIV/AIDS, human rights, and social work education. He leads interdisciplinary initiatives like the Global Refugee Health Research Network and contributes to teaching across BSc, MSW, and MSc programmes. PhD in Social Work (University of Strathclyde, 1999) Masters in Social Work (Kerala, India) His research bridges social work and public health, emphasizing lived experiences of refugees, HIV-affected families, and older populations. Recent projects include: Impact of COVID-19 on families of care home residents in Scotland Adolescent reproductive health in Uganda, Jordan, and Bangladesh HIV/TB care barriers for refugees in Kampala Human rights of HIV-positive asylum seekers Cross-border surrogacy ethics Scientific achievements include: Senior Fellow , UK Higher Education Academy Best Personal Tutor Award (2019) Editorial work on Social Work in a Global Context He supervises PhD projects on topics like Queer women in Kerala , Refugee detention alternatives , and intergenerational care in China . His teaching integrates cross-cultural experiences, including abroad programmes to India.
Rosa Andujar is a Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts at King's College London, where she is affiliated with both the Department of Liberal Arts and the Department of Classics within the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. She serves as Editor of the American Journal of Philology and holds positions on the editorial boards of Brazilian journals Nuntius Antiquus and PhaoS - Revista de Estudos Clássicos. Dr. Andujar was elected to the Program Committee of the Society for Classical Studies for a three-year term (2022-2025), serving as Vice President for Program and Chair from 2023-2025. Her research focuses on two complementary areas: Ancient Greek tragedy, particularly the tragic chorus and its performance capabilities Global receptions of Greek drama, with special emphasis on Latin America and the Caribbean Dr. Andujar's work examines how engagements with Graeco-Roman antiquity intersect with questions of gender, race, class, and national identity. She has particular expertise in Cuban adaptations of Greek tragedy and Latinx receptions of classical drama, exploring how these cultural encounters create new narratives that challenge traditional understandings of classical reception. Her research has been recognized with prestigious awards including the 2020 London Hellenic Prize for 'The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro' and the 2022 AJP Best Article Prize. She has secured significant research funding from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, British Academy, A. G. Leventis Foundation, Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Fundación BBVA. Dr. Andujar's current research projects include 'The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race' (edited volume), 'La Puerta Electra/The Electra Door' (critical bilingual anthology of Cuban rewritings), and 'Tragedy and Revolución' (monograph on Greek drama in Caribbean cultural history), supported by recent fellowships from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and British Academy. She is actively involved in academic service as Editor of the American Journal of Philology, co-editor of the 'Classics and the Postcolonial' book series for Routledge, and Advisory Board member of 'Hesperides: Classics in the Luso-Hispanic World.' Her external examining work for the University of Birmingham (2018-2023) demonstrates her commitment to academic standards across institutions.
Joanna Pawlik is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Art History at the University of Sussex, within the School of Media, Arts and Humanities. Her research focuses on modern art and literature, emphasizing transnationalism, avant-gardism, and protest movements. She has been funded by prestigious grants like the Leverhulme Trust and the AHRC. Her 2021 monograph Remade in America , awarded the MSA First Book Prize, examines Surrealism's role in American activism post-1940. Current research explores fascist iconography in American art (1945–1980), funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. Education: PhD in Art History, University of Sussex (2003–2008) MA in Art History, York University, Canada (2021–2022) BA Hons in Art History, University of East Anglia (2018–2021) Research Interests: Her work investigates surrealism's transnational legacies, anti-fascist art, feminist/queer methodologies, and postwar American visual culture. She examines how surrealist principles intersect with race, gender, class, and activism in movements like the Beat Generation and Black Arts Movement. Grants & Awards: Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2020–2022) Leverhulme Trust Grant 'Radical America: Afterlives' (2016) MSA First Book Prize (2021) Professional Activities: Co-director of the SAVAnT Doctoral School promoting interdisciplinary American visual studies. Supervises PhD projects on postwar American art, anti-fascism, and feminist/queer art history. Engages in public scholarship through interviews and exhibitions.
