معرفی
Dr. Fiona Smith is a Principal Lecturer in Gray's School of Art at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, with over 25 years of experience in teaching, research, and course management in Higher Education. She serves as Stage 4 Coordinator for the BA (Hons) Film and Media degree program and teaches Media Semiotics and Discourse, Postmodern Culture, and Cinema and Society.
Dr. Smith earned her first degree in information science in 1992 and completed her doctorate in environmental journalism in 1996. Her doctoral research examined media representation of the environment in Scotland from the perspective of journalistic praxis, resulting in a book published in 1999. As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she believes reflective evaluation of practice is central to being an academic.
Her research focuses on media representation with particular emphasis on the uncanny in photography and film, digital retrophilic communities, and the mediation of melancholia in urban exploration photography. Her work spans critical and cultural theory, narrative enquiry, and formalist aspects of media and film production. She employs advanced textual analysis methods including semiotics, critical discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis across multiple disciplines.
Dr. Smith's publication record demonstrates consistent engagement with critical theoretical frameworks applied to media representation. Recent works (2022-2024) examine dark tourism, transformative masculinities in fairy tale narratives, and the uncanny place in paranormal television, showing her ongoing commitment to analyzing how media constructs meaning and shapes cultural understanding.
- Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Dr. Smith currently supervises seven PhD students across diverse disciplines including Art, Fashion Management, Marketing, and Media Studies. Her supervision approach reflects her commitment to critical pedagogy and dialogic teaching methods. She has expertise in research design and methodology, particularly in qualitative approaches to media and cultural analysis, and encourages students to develop their own critical perspectives while providing rigorous methodological guidance.
As an active member of MeCCSA (the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association), Dr. Smith contributes to the academic community through her research, teaching, and supervision, maintaining a strong connection between theoretical frameworks and practical applications in media literacy and education.
