Research Students
Find out more about our vibrant postgraduate research community.
Find out more about our vibrant postgraduate research community.
Henry CardenThesis title: Requiem for a Stream: Cult Film Soundtracks in the age of Spotify / Supervisors: Dr Jamie Sexton and Dr Johnny Walker
Contact: @henrycarden |
Henry Carden is a PhD student at Northumbria University. He possesses an MRes (with distinction) in Media Research from the University of Stirling and a BA (with First Class Honours) in Media Studies from Teesside University.
His research interrogates the impact that Spotify has had on film soundtracks and, conversely, the impact that film soundtracks have had on Spotify. This includes focusing on fandom and participatory culture, user generated playlists, Spotify curated playlists, music distribution, audiences and revenue generation. Case studies in his work include films such as Drive, Amelie and Mid90s, as well as directors including David Lynch, Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. Having come into academia from a background within the music industries, Henry previously worked as an award winning festival promoter, composer and artist manager. |
Daisy CampbellThesis title: Exploring British Sports Media’s Representation of Women and/or Femininity in Motorsport and the Impact of Gender Equality Campaigns / Supervisors: Mr Roger Domeneghetti and Dr Ruth Lewis
Contact: [email protected] / @daisydesmet |
Daisy Campbell is a full-time PhD student with an MSc Sport and Exercise and a BSc Sport and Exercise (Sport Studies) from Teesside University. An avid sports enthusiast (as both spectator and competitor), her research interests include the representation of women in sport, sport media, sport sociology, sport history and gender studies.
Daisy's PhD research -- funded by a Sociology Research Development Fund studentship -- explores representations of women in motorsport in the British media over the past 10 years and considers the impact of equality campaigns such as #metoo and #timesup on the reporting of women in the sport. Since 2015, Daisy has been a member of Dare to Be Different, which has provided her with unique access to women in motorsport within the UK. |
Craig ClarkThesis title: The Depiction of Psychedelic Culture and Experiences in North American Screen Media / Supervisor: Dr Jamie Sexton
Contact: [email protected] |
Craig Clark's research concerns the American Dream as the philosophical component of America, how it functions as part of the country’s political framework to shape various cultural practices and, in turn, the way said practices are presented across media.
Craig's PhD considers these factors in relation to the psychedelic experience as depicted in narrative cinema, documentary, music and music video, and podcasts/other new media sources. The aim of the project is to provide a novel interpretation of these media and, beyond this, apply interdisciplinary research methods to other texts. |
Stuart FrazerThesis title: Onscreen Representations of North East England’s Working Class in the Television Adaptations of Catherine Cookson’s Novels / Supervisor: James Leggott
Contact: [email protected] / @stuface |
Stuart Frazer is a 2nd year PhD researcher in Film and Television Studies in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. His research explores the representation of North East England’s working class in period film and television drama. His aim is to unite a number of academic discourses, some of which include Cultural Memory, Nostalgia, Heritage Media, Screen Tourism and others.
By drawing on this range of disciplines he will examine how the television adaptations of Catherine Cookson’s novels have informed audience perceptions of South Tyneside’s sociopolitical history and identity in this under-represented working-class community. Stuart’s further interests include atypical cult texts, working-class queer screen representations, film and television tourism and nostalgic portrayals of the past. |
Adam HerronThesis title: Queering the Porn Theatre: Sexual Spaces in New York City, 1967-1980 / Supervisors: Dr Johnny Walker and Dr Steve Jones
Contact: [email protected] @onlythebassist / https://northumbria.academia.edu/AdamHerron |
Adam Herron is an AHRC-funded Northern Bridge PhD candidate at Northumbria University, working in the Department of Arts with the supervisory team Dr Johnny Walker and Dr Steve Jones. His doctoral research project ‘Queering the Porn Theatre: Sexual Spaces in New York City, 1967-1980’ is an investigation of sexual spaces in New York’s theatre district, examining nostalgic remediation of the grind house movie theatre and queer sexualities in Times Square.
Adam has delivered conference papers at numerous institutions, including Aberystwyth University, Birmingham City University, De Montfort University, Northumbria University, Sheffield Hallam University and the University of East Anglia. He has published work with presses including Intellect and Manchester University Press, and has written blogs for the British Association for American Studies, the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, and Screening Sex. For a full list of conference presents and public presentations, see Adam's profile on Academia.edu. |
Hanna KreitemThesis title: Internet Walled Gardens: Artificial Internet Limitations and Digital Inequalities / Supervisors: Dr Massimo Ragnedda and Professor Jason Whalley
Contact: https://hanna.ps / @hannaq |
Hanna Kreitem is a PhD researcher in Media and Communication with research interests in the effects of the Internet and technology on societies including digital inequalities related to emerging technologies as well as inequalities perpetuated as forms of oppression.
His current research looks at artificial Internet limitations and their relation to tangible outcomes of Internet use and working on research projects related to weaponisation of access, and the blockchain disadvantaged. With a background in Computer Science and Business Administration and knowledge in digital rights activism in different regions of the world, Hanna possesses a distinctive understanding of how technology and technology companies work. |
Tom MayThesis title: An interpretive history of Play for Today (BBC1, 1970-84) / Supervisors: Dr James Leggott and Dr Jamie Sexton
Contact: [email protected] / @DreamCargoes / https://northumbria.academia.edu/TomMay |
Tom May is a second-year PhD student. His project, supervised by Dr James Leggott, is charting a history and textual analysis of BBC 1’s Play For Today (1970-84) strand, focusing on its place in British television ad cultural history. In 2017, he had a three-part essay on David Edgar’s Play For Today ‘Destiny’ (1978) published on the British Television Drama website. He has presented conference papers on Cold War fictions of Dennis Potter, John le Carré and Graham Greene, as well as 'race', nation, class and power in Play for Today.
He has a blog, Opening Negotiations, about British culture in the Cold War. After completing an English degree at Trinity Hall, Cambridge (2001-4) and an MA in Film Studies at Northumbria University (2004-5), he taught English and Communication and Culture, among other A-Level courses, for 12 years, at Newcastle Sixth Form College. His recent report on the IAMHIST 2019 conference can be accessed here. |
Ami NisaThesis title: The Camera as Character: Theorising Non-Human Agency in the Found-Footage Horror Film / Supervisors: Dr Steve Jones and Dr Johnny Walker
Contact: [email protected] |
Ami Nisa is undertaking a PhD on the American found-footage horror film and technological agency. The found-footage film is explicitly defined by its relationship to technology, as the horror in these films stems from an unknown source that is revealed via technology. The cameras in these films have a dual role: they not only capture what is taking place, but are entrenched in the action of the films themselves, becoming a central acting force in the films’ narratives. In this context, the camera is not only a mediating object, but an active subject.
Drawing on sociological perspectives of technology, Ami's research explores the agency of the camera technologies, with the explicit aim of interrogating and theorising how the camera itself can be read as a non-human character. In doing so, studying the power/ agency of the technological, non-human, subject. Her research interests more broadly include film theory, horror, technology, and power. |
Rui Trindade OliveiraThesis title: An Examination of Southern Europeanness in Italian and Spanish Horror Cinema: 1968-2018 / Supervisors: Dr Johnny Walker and Dr Russ Hunter (formerly Professor Peter Hutchings)
Contact: [email protected] / https://northumbria.academia.edu/RuiOliveira55 |
Rui Trindade Oliveira is a final year PhD researcher at Northumbria University, having recently submitted his dissertation on the cultural and industrial contexts of Southern European horror cinema, under the supervision of Dr Johnny Walker. Moving beyond “national cinemas” discourse, his thesis considers the horror production of two Southern European countries, Italy and Spain, and examines cultural elements that films from each nation share. The study argues that a fuller understating of European horror is possible when one acknowledges the output of Italy and Spain as being interconnected, as possessing a supranational, Southern European, identity.
Rui holds a BA in Film Studies from the University of Beira Interior, Portugal, as well as a BA in Biology and an MA in Forensic Sciences, from the University of Aveiro and from the University of Porto, Portugal, respectively. He has spoken about his research at academic events, and presented papers at conferences at Northumbria, University of Manchester and the American University of Rome (Italy). |
Rebecca StantonThesis title: Representations of Animal Harm and Objectification in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Films (1937-2016) Utilizing Theories of Romanticism, Speciesism, and Compassion / Supervisors: Dr Steve Jones and Dr Sarah Ralph
Contact: [email protected] / @rebecca_stanton |
Rebecca Stanton's PhD (submitted October 2019) explores representations of animal harm and objectification in animated Disney feature films (1937-2016). The main theories she utilizes are speciesism, romanticism, and the "collapse of compassion" effect.
Rebecca has presented her research at Padua University (Italy), Oxford University, and, of course, Northumbria University. In 2018, she was made an associate fellow at the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics, through which she has several forthcoming publications. In 2018, she became the conveyor of the "Animals and Animation" study group within the Society for Animation Studies (SAS). Rebecca has written several blog posts for SAS, and is presently curating an upcoming series of posts on cats in animation. |
Erin WiegandThesis title: Exploiting Reality: Selling Sex, Culture, and Authenticity in the Exploitation Documentary
/ Supervisors: Dr Johnny Walker and Dr Steve Jones Contact: @erinewiegand / https://northumbria.academia.edu/ErinEWiegand |
Erin Wiegand is a PhD candidate at Northumbria University. Her dissertation examines the roles of pleasure and entertainment in the history of documentary film, focusing on lurid, illicit, and sensationalist nonfiction films theatrically distributed in the U.S.—largely by independent ‘exploitation’ outfits—from the 1950s to the early 70s. By considering nonfiction films as a commercial product rather than an artistic or social endeavor, she aims to intervene in traditional histories of documentary: ‘exploitation documentaries’ pose a challenge to common conceptions of documentary sobriety, veracity, and educational value.
In addition to her dissertation research, Erin also volunteers as a film programmer at the Star and Shadow Cinema and as web editor for the JCMS Teaching Dossier. Her most recent publication is ‘The Margins of Mondo: Tracing Genre through 1960s American "Mondo" Film Discourse’ (Film International 88, 2019). |
Scott WilliamsThesis title: At the Crossroads: Examining (Re)presentations of Women’s Team Sport in the English National Press and Sports Policy, 2010-2018 / Supervisors: Dr Sarah Ralph and Mr Roger Domeneghetti
Contact: [email protected] / @swilliamssports |
Scott Williams is a PhD researcher at Northumbria University. His thesis examines the national print media and public policy representations of women’s team sports in England, interrogating how the concepts of hegemonic masculinity and governmentality impact common sense understandings within sport. His other current research focuses are sports governance and sport and nationalism.
Previously, he has worked on projects examining the governance of English football by the Football Association and football fandom in the North East. He has previously studied Sports Management (BSc) at Loughborough University before completing a Masters in Research (Social Sciences) at Northumbria University. |