BA (Film Studies and Italian)

MA (Film Studies and Film Archiving)

PhD (Italian film)

After graduating in Film Studies and Italian from the University of Kent I spent a year teaching English in Naples before taking an MA in Film Archiving at the University of East Anglia and working for the BFI’s National Film and Television Archive. I then returned to full-time academia to complete a PhD on Neapolitan Cinema at the University of Reading.

I worked briefly in the Department of Italian at the University of Leeds and the BFI’s Filmographic Department before taking up a post as Research Coordinator at the Centre for Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. At the CFS I was responsible for the day-to-day running of StAFS publishing and for organising conferences and lecture series. I also helped to set up the British Association of Film Television and Screen Studies.

I joined the University of Birmingham in September 2012.

I teach on a wide range of national cinemas as part of the European Cinema courses at Birmingham, as well as on media studies for various European Studies modules.

I would welcome enquiries about research and supervision on any areas related to Italian cinema, to European post-war genre cinema or silent cinema.

My principal area of interest in recent years has been on the cinema of Naples, using the resurgence in film production in the city over the past two decades as a case study to explore the notion of regional cinema, as well as the generic and industrial shifts that have taken place in contemporary Italian cinema during this period. Beyond this I have a wide range of interests in relation to Italian cinema and have published on many under-studied popular genres (musicals, crime thrillers, historical epics, gothic horror) as well as on contemporary directors (Mario Martone, Antonio Capuano, Paolo Sorrentino), silent cinema, and film distribution and exhibition.

I also have secondary interests in relation to a number of other national cinemas, especially Japan, and I conducted pioneering research into British crime series and serials of the 1910s and 1920s, programming the first retrospective devoted to the subject at the National Film Theatre in 2003.

Broadly, I am interested in the problematics surrounding concepts like national/ transnational/ regional cinema and ‘popular’/ ‘art’ cinema – and the areas of intersection between these concepts.

I also have an active interest in both film preservation and film festivals and I am currently co-editing a book that will bring together these two concerns: Archival Film Festivals, to be published by St Andrews Film Studies in 2013.

I am also currently in the early stages of a major new research project devoted to the genre of the Political Thriller, viewed from an international perspective.

I am one of the founding members of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies and I currently serve on the Executive Committee.

I am a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Italian and Media Studies and the e-journal Cine-Excess.

Books

The New Neapolitan Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

Edited Books

Archival Film Festivals, St Andrews Film Studies, forthcoming 2013.

Chapters in Edited Books

'Subjectivity and the Ethnographic Gaze in Antonio Capuano's Vito e gli altri' in Danielle Hipkins and Roger Pitt (eds), Re-envisioning the Child in Italian Film, Peter Lang, forthcoming 2013.

‘Strategies of Tension: Towards a Re-interpretation of The Big Racket and the Italian Crime Film’ in Sergio Rigoletto and Louis Bayman (eds), Italian Popular Cinema, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, pp. 133-146.

'Italy' in Corey Creekmur and Linda Mokdad (eds), The International Film Musical, University of Edinburgh Press, 2012, pp. 80-91.

‘Gothic Horror’ in Louis Bayman (ed.), Directory of World Cinema: Italy, Intellect, 2011, pp. 154-175.

'Character Engagement and Alienation in the Cinema of Paolo Sorrentino' in William Hope (ed.), Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 161-173.

'Un cinema di nicchia: le fortune in Gran Bretagna' [A Niche Cinema: the Fortunes of Italian Cinema in Great Britain] in Vito Zagarrio (ed.), Il nuovo-nuovo cinema italiano, Marsilio, 2006, pp. 292-296.

'British Series and Serials in the Silent Era' in Andrew Higson (ed.), Young and Innocent: Cinema and Britain 1896-1930,University of Exeter Press, 2002, pp. 147-161.

Journal Articles

‘Beyond Post-realism: A Response to Millicent Marcus’, The Italianist, 30:2, 2010, pp. 263-268.

'The Tears of Naples' Daughters: Re-Interpreting the Sceneggiata in Mario Martone's L'amore molesto', The Italianist, 29:2, 2009, pp. 199-213.

'Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei or the Evolution of the Italian Historical Epic (1908-1926)' in La Valle dell'Eden, 6, 2001, pp. 67-78.

Reviews, Encyclopedia and Web Entries

'Female Prisoner Scorpion Trilogy', Viewfinder, 75, June 2009, p. 25.

'Bellissima', Viewfinder, 68, October 2007, p. 24.

Entries on various Italian émigré actors in Alastair Phillips and Ginette Vincendeau (eds), Journeys of Desire: European Actors in Hollywood, BFI, 2006.

'Sydney Gottleib (ed.), Roberto Rossellini's Rome Open City (Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)', Viewfinder, 2005.

'The Exploits of Three-Fingered Kate (1912)', Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/727128/index.html

'Lieutenant Daring and the Plans of the Mine Fields (1912)', Screenonline, http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/539782/index.html