Shelley Cobb serves as Professor of Film and Feminist Media Studies within the Department of Film Studies at the University of Southampton's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, where she has been a faculty member since 2008. A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she leads foundational undergraduate modules including Film2019: Women and Hollywood and Film2028: Film Adaptation while co-convening the MA module Film Stardom and Celebrity Culture, significantly shaping film education through feminist and critical industry perspectives. Her research program centers on women filmmakers, gender dynamics in Hollywood, celebrity culture, and film adaptation, with particular emphasis on intersectional analyses of race, class, and aging. As Principal Investigator for the AHRC-funded 'Calling the Shots' project (2000-2015), she pioneered data collection on women in British film production, establishing womencallingtheshots.com as a vital public resource that continues to drive industry equality initiatives through its comprehensive reports and media impact. Professor Cobb's publication trajectory from 2018-2024 reveals evolving scholarly focus: early work established foundational critiques of gender inequality (e.g., 'What about the Men?'), while recent scholarship examines aging women filmmakers, Black women's industry experiences, and intersectional analyses of adaptations like Little Fires Everywhere . Her collaborative approach with researchers Linda Ruth Williams and Natalie Wreyford produces methodologically diverse outputs spanning statistical analyses, oral histories, and critical discourse studies that consistently bridge academic rigor and public discourse. Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy She actively supervises eight PhD candidates pursuing cutting-edge research on Black women in Hollywood, Chinese chick flicks, East Asian celebrity, and queer Black cinema, building on her supervision of completed theses covering British women directors, literary celebrity, and children's media adaptation. Her grant leadership extends beyond the AHRC project to include British Academy-funded research on 'Women in Film After the Ottoman Empire', demonstrating sustained excellence in securing major research funding. As a core member of the Centre for International Film Research and Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities, Cobb integrates her scholarly work with public engagement through womencallingtheshots.com, which hosts industry reports and oral history archives. Her co-editorship of Celebrity Studies and co-authorship of First Comes Love: Power Couples, Celebrity Kinship and Cultural Politics further anchor her within international scholarly networks driving contemporary media studies.
