Anthony Paraskeva

PhD (Cambridge)

MPhil (Glasgow)

BA Hons (Cambridge)

I specialise in twentieth and twenty-first century literature, cinema and theatre. My first monograph, The Speech-Gesture Complex, explores the relations between language and gesture in modernist literature, performance, and silent cinema. My second book, Samuel Beckett and Cinema, is a critical study of Beckett’s long-standing interest in cinema, situating him in the film culture of the twenties and thirties, and second wave post-war modernism.

My research interests include literary modernism, literature and film, new media, styles of acting, screenwriting, montage, the film essay, gesture, silent cinema, the nouvelle vague, theatricality.

I am currently working on a book-length project on the relations between film editing and literary technique, an edited collection on performance practice and moving image research, and a funded project on Byzantium and modernism.

I am also a practicing filmmaker, and have recently completed a feature film I wrote and directed, Exit Medea.

I welcome applications from research students wishing to study in any area of modernism, cinema, media, theatre, screenwriting.

External Funding

In September 2023, my project on Byzantium and Modernism was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant. 

In June 2022, Voices of the Cassel - a partnership between myself as academic lead, The Cassel Hospital Charitable Trust and On the Record - was awarded BIG South London Hothouse funding. The project won the ‘Health and Care Collaboration of the Year’ award at the BIG South London Innovation Summit in October 2023.

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Modernist Studies Association

British Association for Modernist Studies

Samuel Beckett Society

Screenwriting Research Network

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)

British Film Institute

British Universities Film and Video Council

Film London

I have taught across the full range of undergraduate modules in English, including Literature and Cinema, Literature, Film and Philosophy, Literature and Media, Modernist and Post-War Literature, London in Literature, Dissertations and Visual Storytelling. I am part of the teaching team on the Creative Writing MA dissertation.