Dr Kate Egan
Senior Lecturer in Film and Media

Research interests: Horror cinema, British cinema and  television, film censorship, audience and reception studies, film and television comedy, memory studies, local cinemagoing histories
Twitter: @kte75
Academia.edu: Profile
About
Kate is the author of Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties (MUP, 2007), Cultographies: The Evil Dead (Wallflower, 2011), and (with Martin Barker, Tom Philips and Sarah Ralph) Alien Audiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is also the co-editor of Cult Film Stardom (with Sarah Thomas, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python (with Jeffrey Weinstock, EUP, 2020), and Researching Historical Screen Audiences (with Jamie Terrill and Martin Smith, EUP, forthcoming). She is currently working on practice-based research focused on the Dirt in the Gate cinema events and their audiences at the Shelley Theatre, Bournemouth, and planning and developing further research on audience memories of horror film and television.
Qualifications
  • PGCTHE, University of Wales, 2011.
  • PhD in Film Studies: ‘Bad Objects: Taste, Consumption and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasty’, University of Nottingham, 2005. 
  • MA in Film Studies, University of Nottingham, 1999.
  • BA (Hons) Film and Drama, University of Reading, 1997.
Professional Affiliations
  • Editorial Board Member for Media History Journal.
  • Member of Associate Editorial Board for Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.
  • Member of Steering Group, AHRC Global Cult Cinema in the Age of Convergence Network, 2013-2015.
  • Member of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and the BAFTSS British Cinema and Television Special Interest Group.
  • Co-convenor, BAFTSS Horror Studies Special Interest Group.
  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), since June 2012.
Employment
Kate began working at Northumbria in May 2020, after working for twelve years as lecturer and then senior lecturer in film studies at Aberystwyth University. Between 2003 and 2004, she was a research assistant on the ESRC- funded The International Lord of the Rings Audience Project (run by Professor Martin Barker and Professor Ernest Mathijs).

Between 2016 and 2019, she was external examiner for the BA Film and Television Studies programme at Northumbria University, and, between 2009 and 2012, external examiner for the MA Film Studies programme at London Metropolitan University.
​​Institutional Roles
Convener of the Moving Image, Popular Media and Culture Research Group, Department of Arts
​PhD Supervision 
Kate has previously supervised 12 PhD Students to completion:
As First Supervisor:
  • ​Jamie Terrill, 'An Investigation of Rural Welsh Cinemas: Their Histories, Memories and Communities' (2019).
  • Thomas Alcott, 'Wrestling with Stardom: The Factors and Contexts that Inform the Relations between Wrestling Stars and their Audiences' (2018).
  • Nia Edwards-Behi, 'Remaking Controversy? Three Case Studies of the Changing Reception of Controversial Films and their Remakes' (2016).
  • Edward Payne, 'Football Memories: The Exploration of Football Fandom through Popular Cultural Memory' (2013).
  • Stephanie Jones, 'Masculinity and the James Bond Films: A Textual and Reception Study' (2013).
As Joint Supervisor:
  • Wikanda Promkhuntong, 'On Becoming Asian Auteurs: The Transnational Reputation Making Processes of Wong Kar Wai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Kim Ki-duk' (2017).
As Second Supervisor:
  • Terence Bailey, 'Screenwriting Manuals, 1911-Present' (2015).
  • Emma Pett, 'A Contested Category: British Audiences and Asian Extreme Films' (2013).
  • Rebekah Smith, 'Tarantino's Audiences: A Cognitive-based Audience Research  Enquiry' (2011).
  • Sarah Ralph, 'Watching With Mother: How Film Stars are Utilised in Mother-Daughter Relations' (2011).
  • Russ Hunter, 'A Cross-Cultural Reception Study of the Films of Dario Argento in the UK and Italy' (2009).
  • Kerstin Leder, 'Audiences Talking "Fear": A Qualitative Investigation' (2009).
Modules Taught
​MI4009 Introduction to Television Studies
MI5013 Hollywood Cinema
MI6002 The Modern Horror Film
MP5019 Researching Audiences
Public Engagement 
  • Introduction to a 40th anniversary screening of Monty Python's Life of Brian, Dirt in the Gate Movies, The Shelley Theatre, Bournemouth, December 2019.
  • Interview about the 40th anniversary of Monty Python's Life of Brian, ABC News Australia, August 2019.
  • Interview in The Digital Human episode 'Ghoul', BBC Radio Four, July 2019.
  • Interviews on BBC Good Morning Wales and BBC Good Morning Scotland about the Monty Python Memories project, August 2017.
  • 'Previously Banned: The Video Nasties and Moral Panic as Marketing Strategy on DVD' given as part of the Trash or Treasure? The Politics of Genre Cinema conference, held as part of the fourth Kurja Polt Genre Film Festival (entitled 'Repression and Revolt'), Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 2017.
  • Introduction to a rare 16mm screening of The Evil Dead, Dirt in the Gate Movies, The Shelley Theatre, Bournemouth, November 2015.
  • Interview contribution to the documentary Video Nasties: Draconian Days (Jake West, 2014).
  • Introduction to Countess Dracula, Abertoir: The National Horror Festival of Wales, 2010.
  • Interview about the screening of Monty Python's Life of Brian at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, March 2009.
  • Knowledge exchange projects with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC): I was part of a research team commissioned by the BBFC to conduct research on audience responses to sexual violence in controversial cinema in 2006, and, along with Professor Martin Barker, collaborated with the BBFC on a successful AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award application in 2008.
Recent Conferences & Talks
  • '"So Well Acted" to "No Acting There!": Ridley Scott's Alien and Audience Responses to Performances in the "Chestburster" Sequence', Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference, Atlanta, March 2016.
  • 'The Film that was Banned in Harrogate: Local Newspapers, Monty Python's Life of Brian and the Expression of an Alternative Local Community', Research Seminar at Edgehill University, March 2016.​
  • 'Local Censorship, the BBFC and the Pythonesque: The British The Life of Brian Controversy', Research Seminar at Northumbria University, January 2016.
  • '"You've Never Seen Anything Like...": The Criterion Collection's Conceptions of Global Cult and Exploitation', Global Exploitation Cinemas: Historical and Critical Approaches Conference, Lincoln, May 2015.
  • 'The Film that was Banned in Harrogate: Local Censorship, Local Newspapers and Monty Python's Life of Brian', Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference, Montreal, March 2015.
  • 'Victimising the Victim: Fan Responses to the Kubrick-Duvall Relationship in The Shining (1980)', Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference, Seattle, March 2014.
  • 'Obviously, Naturally, Of Course...The Chestburster Scene: Audience Responses to an Iconic Film Moment', Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) conference, Bournemouth, January 2014.
  • 'Local Censorship, the BBFC and the Pythonesque: The British The Life of Brian Controversy', Research Seminar at Queen's University Belfast, October 2013.
Recent Publications
  • Egan, K. (2020) ''The Film That’s Banned in Harrogate’: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Local Censorship, Comedy and Local Resistance', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439685.2020.1815363
  • Egan, K. (2020) 'Memories of Connecting: Fathers, Daughters and Intergenerational Monty Python Fandom' in Kate Egan and Jeffrey Weinstock (eds) And Now For Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).
  • Egan, K, M. Smith & J. Terrill (2019) 'Introduction to Themed Section: Researching Past Cinema Audiences', Participations 16:1.
  • Egan, K. (2019) '"The Overlooked, The Side-lined and the Undervalued': BFI Flipside, Cult DVD Labels and the Lost Continents of British Cinema', Cinephile 13:1: 13-17.
  • Egan, K. (2017) 'The Criterion Collection, Cult-Art Films and Japanese Horror: DVD Labels as Transnational Mediators?', Transnational Cinemas 8:1: 65-79.
  • Egan, K. (2016) 'Cults in British Cinema and Film Culture' in I.Q. Hunter, Laraine Porter and Justin Smith (eds) The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History (London: Taylor and Francis), 494-510.
  • Barker, M. K. Egan, T. Philips & S. Ralph (2016) Alien Audiences: Remembering and Evaluating a Classic Movie (Basinstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
Peer Review
Kate has acted as a peer reviewer for journals such as Horror Studies, Media History, Participations, Journal of Popular Television, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and Feminist Media Studies.
Kate has also peer reviewed monographs and proposals for Bloomsbury, Edinburgh University Press, and Palgrave Macmillan.