Jonathan Munby

Dr. Jonathan Munby is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American Studies at Lancaster University’s Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA). He has been affiliated with the university since 1995 and holds roles as Associate Director of Research and Undergraduate Studies at LICA. His teaching spans undergraduate and postgraduate modules, including African American Cinema, New Hollywood Cinema, and Film Studies core courses. He supervises PhD students on topics like South Korean cinema queering, Nigerian filmmakers, and outsider American cinema.

Dr. Munby holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota (1995). His research focuses on American and African-American cinema, race and ethnicity, British cinema post-Windrush, and popular culture theories. Current projects include a monograph on mixed-race representations in British/American cinema and a biography of activist Julian Mayfield. He was a Sheila Bidle Ford Fellow at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (2010–2013).

His publications explore themes like Harlem Renaissance figures, hip-hop aesthetics, and criminal identity in cinema. Recent work includes Rudolph Fisher: Renaissance Man and Harlem’s Interpreter (2021) and studies on African-American cinema’s engagement with social justice. He contributes to the Cultures Insight Practices research group at LICA.