Personal statement

I am Professor of Feminist Media Studies and Programme Director for the MSc in Applied Gender Studies.

I have been at Strathclyde since 2018, having previously held positions at the Universities of Stirling (Professor of Feminist Media Studies), Glasgow (Senior/Lecturer in Film & Television Studies) and Wolverhampton (Lecturer in Women's Studies). 

My research has long focused on questions of violence, gender and representation: my most recent book is #MeToo, Weinstein and Feminism (Palgrave, 2019) and I am currenty co-editing (with Susan Berridge) a major international collection for Routledge, focusing on gender and violence in fact-based media (2023). Earlier publications include Media and Violence: Gendering the Debate (Sage 2005) and, as editor,  Everyday Pornography (Routledge 2010). I have additional research interests in media audiences, gender and news, and the women's movement in Scotland.

In 2018, I led a Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded Workshop series on Tackling Gendered Inequalities in Scottish News, which led to the foundation of Gender Equal Media Scotland, a grouping of academics, journalists and activists working towards gender equality in Scottish media. With Talat Yaqoob and Melody House, from 2020-21 I led the research supporting the Pass the Mic project, focusing on women of colour in Scottish news media. I am the Scottish Coordinator for the Global Media Monitoring Project (2015, 2020).

On the teaching side, I am one of the Programme Directors (with Sophie Jones) of Applied Gender Studies and contribute to the core classes Understanding Gender; Feminist Knowledge, Feminist Research; and Feminisms – Continuity and Change. I also coordinate the Gender Studies Research Placement and have experience of working with a wide range of external organisations to support student research.

I am an experienced PhD supervisor and examiner and welcome applications from new students working in the broad areas of feminist film, television and media studies; gendered violence and representation; audience research and genre studies; and interdisciplinary feminist approaches to gender and violence.

I have supervised 13 PhDs to completion including: an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award project on Glasgow Film Festival audiences and year-round cinema-going (with Glasgow Film as non-academic partner; completed 2014); projects on forensic crime drama; violence in Italian popular cinema; female atheleticism in cinema; sexual violence in teen television; queer relationships in teen film; masculinity and surveillance in the serial killer film; gender and the giallo; adaptations of Snow White in film, television and comic books; female cannibalism in film & literature; and rape discourse on social media; as well as two-practice based projects, one using the audio-visual essay to explore female performance in film, the other a novella series exploring women's experiences of violence over time. 

I am Deputy Chair of Sub-Panel 34 (Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management) for REF2021, and an elected member of the Media Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Executive Committee (2014-2022). Outside of academia,  I have been on the Board of Directors of the feminist anti-violence organisation the Women's Support Project for twenty years.