Associate Professor in Film

Deputy Research Degrees Convenor (for Media, Culture & Language) in the School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

BA (Hons) Film and Literature (Warwick);
MA Film and Television Studies (Westminster);
PGCE (Post-Compulsory Education) (London);
PhD Cultural Studies (Cardiff).

My key research and teaching interests lie in the fields of women, feminism, culture and the contemporary screen industries; US cinema and genres (particularly the work of women practitioners); cultures of celebrity; contemporary TV drama; crime and popular culture; and audience studies across a breadth of media and creative industry contexts.

Most recently, my longstanding interest in ageing and the media has developed to turn a spotlight on what I have termed 'the menopausal turn'. This examines the social and cultural implications of the burgeoning attention to menopause, looking particularly at the UK media but increasingly expanding internationally too. In 2024 I was awarded a MeCCSA Outstanding Achievement Award (Journal Article of the Year) for my article, ''Everything you need to embrace the change': The 'menopausal turn' in contemporary UK culture', published in the Journal of Aging Studies. Having won funding in 2023, through 2024-25, I will be Co-I on the AHRC Research Network, 'MAUSI Net: Menopause Artivism in UK, Sweden and India', working with colleagues at the Universities of Greenwich, Malmö and Delhi.

I am the author/editor of 11 books, including four monographs, which engage with popular film and media in a range of ways. Following a number of co-edited collections including The Audience Studies Reader (Routledge, 2003) and Understanding Reality TV (Routledge, 2004), my first monograph, Crime Watching: Investigating Real Crime TV (IB Tauris, 2006) examined the rapid rise of this strand of popular programming on contemporary television. Having been awarded an AHRC Research Leave grant in 2007, I published Sex and the City (Wayne State University Press, 2009) and a co-edited collection with my colleague Stacey Abbott, Falling in Love Again: Romantic Comedy in Contemporary Cinema (IB Tauris, 2009), followed by a monograph on Prime Suspect for the BFI TV Classics series in 2010. 

In the the first of two books examining women ageing in the public eye, in 2013 I published Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (Routledge 2013), bringing together an international collection of scholars looking at issues as diverse as contracts for ageing women stars in the studio system and contemporary celebrity blogs. This was followed in 2015 by Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing: Freeze Frame (Palgrave Macmillan) co-edited with Su Holmes. Next, my monograph Nancy Meyers (Bloomsbury, 2017), was the first book-length study dedicated to the director who was for much of her career the most commercially successful woman filmmaker in history.

My most recent book, Love Across the Atlantic: US-UK Romance in Popular Culture, (co-edited with Barbara J Brickman and Ted Trost) was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020. This emerged from an international partnership and event based at Roehampton, when in June 2017 I co-convened 'Love Across the Atlantic: An Interdisciplinary Conference on US-UK Romance' on campus, along with colleagues from the University of Alabama. Currently I continue to work both on questions of ageing women and the media, regularly collaborating with the Women Over Fifty Film Festival, and on the work of women directors, including forthcoming publications on films by Gina Prince-Bythewood, Nicole Holofcener and Sophie Hyde.

- Inner Editorial Board for Celebrity Studies

- International Editorial Board of the International Journal of Cultural Studies (2006-2016)

- Board of Corresponding Editors for Critical Studies in Television

- Series Editor for Edinburgh University Press' 'TV Genres' series

- Advisory Board for Edinburgh University Press' 'Visionaries: Thinking Through Female Filmmakers' series

- Member of Higher Education Academy

- Member of SCMS and MeCCSA

Examining Experience:

External Examiner, University of Leicester, BA Film (2020-21)

External Examiner, University of Glasgow, MA/BA Film and Television (2016-2020)

External Panel member, validation of the Film Production and Film & Television Production BA programmes, University of Bedfordshire (2016)

External Panel member, validation of BA Media Production and review of the Media Framework, Bournemouth University Media School (2012)

External Examiner for Foundation Programmes in Film, Languages Centre, Queen Mary, University of London (2012-2016)

External Examiner for BA Film Studies at Brunel University (2011-2015)

Progression and Award External Examiner, School of Media, Southampton Solent University (2009-2013)

External Examiner for the School of Communication, MA Film & Television and BA Communication Studies, Dublin City University (2009-2012)

External Examiner for BA Film Studies at London Metropolitan University and at Kingston University (2005-08)

Assessor for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Peer Reviewer for the ESRC, UK and TECHNE Peer Review College, UK

PhD Examining:

I have examined 18 PhDs, including x4 as Internal Examiner at the University of Roehampton.

Modules taught:

Understanding Film Language; The Politics of Screens: Women-Practice-Representation; Cinema in the Digital Age; Film History and Criticism; Audiences and Reception; Approaches to Popular Cinema; Creative/Critical Dissertation