Professor Kate Ince BA, MA, PhD, FHEA

Photograph of Dr Kate Ince

Department of Modern Languages
Professor of French and Visual Studies

Contact details

Address
Ashley Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

My work is on French film and the visual arts, film and feminist theory and philosophy, and sexuality and gender.

Qualifications

  • BA
  • MA (Critical Theory)
  • DPhil (French Studies)
  • FHEA, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Biography

My BA was in Modern Languages (French and German) at St John's College, Oxford, which I followed with an MA in Critical Theory and DPhil in French Studies at the University of Sussex. I then worked as a lectrice (colloquial assistant of English) for two years in France (Dijon and Paris) before being appointed to a lecturership in French at Birmingham, in 1990. I was made Reader in French Film and Gender Studies in 2006, and Professor of French and Visual Studies in 2020.

Teaching

Having organized the French cinema curriculum for Birmingham’s Department of French Studies for many years until 2011, I then (in the Department of Modern Languages) convened and taught (on) optional modules called Behind the Camera: women’s cinema from the 1960s to the presentArtists’ Film and Video; Introduction to European FilmCross-Cultural Cinema: Migration and Displacement, and Ethics, Politics, Race and Sexuality in Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema. I have also taught on the core modules of Modern Languages’s MA in Global Comparative Literatures and Critical Theories, on the Sexuality, Gender and Representation module of the MRes Sexuality and Gender Studies, and on Core modules I, II and V of the BA Modern Languages (French).

Postgraduate supervision

I have supervised or co-supervised eight PhDs, two MAs by Research (40,000 word thesis) and numerous shorter Masters theses/dissertations to completion, and currently lead supervise one PhD on French film (‘Anachronistic Heroes in French comedy cinema’), co-supervise a PhDs on French cinematic memories of the années noires, and am advising a visiting PhD student from the University of Melbourne on her thesis on Céline Sciamma.


Find out more - our PhD French Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

My latest book The Cinema of Mia Hansen-Løve: candour and vulnerability was published in Edinburgh University Press’s ‘Visionaries’ series on women film-makers in February 2021. This followed The Body and the Screen, on female subjectivities in the films of French and British women directors, which appeared in Bloomsbury’s ‘Thinking Cinema’ series in January 2017 and won BAFTSS Best Monograph award for that year. I was PI of the AHRC network ‘Serge Daney and queer cinephilia’ from July 2018 to June 2021, with Professor Marc Siegel of the University of Mainz, Germany as Co-Investigator, and Dr Pierre Eugene of the Université d’Amiens as third project team member; a collection of essays arising from this network project is being published by Meson Press in 2023.

Other activities

I am a General Editor of French Screen Studies (formerly Studies in French Cinema), and co-convene the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies’ Special Interest Group on French and Francophone Screen Studies. I am also a member of BAFTSS, of the European Network for Cinema Studies (NECS) and of the Women’s Film and Television History Network (WFTHN). I regularly attend the conferences of these associations and have done public engagement talks for Birmingham’s IKON gallery and the Mockingbird cinema at Birmingham’s Custard Factory.

Publications

Highlight publications

Ince, K 2021, The Cinema of Mia Hansen-Love: candour and vulnerability. Visionaries: Thinking Through Female Filmmakers, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. <https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-cinema-of-mia-hansen-love.html>

Ince, K 2019, Whose Identification? A Brief Meditation on the Relevance of Jean-PIerre Meunier's The Structures of the Film Experience to Contemporary Feminist Film Phenomenology. in J Hanich & D Fairfax (eds), The Structures of the Film Experience: Historical Assessments and Phenomenological Expansions. Film Theory in Media History, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, pp. 259-271.

Ince, K 2017, The Body and the Screen: female subjectivities in contemporary women's cinema. Thinking Cinema, 1st edn, Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501396519

Recent publications

Book

Eugene, P, Ince, K & Siegel, M (eds) 2024, Serge Daney and Queer Cinephilia. konfigurationen-des-films.de [Configurations of Film], Meson Press, Lüneberg, Germany. https://doi.org/10.14619/0184

Article

Ince, K 2022, '#MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc, the feminist rape-revenge film in the 2010s and Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge', The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, vol. VI, no. 1, pp. 110-125.

Ince, K 2020, 'Ethics, gender and vulnerability in the films of Mia Hansen-Løve', Film-Philosophy, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 104-121. https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2020.0134

Ince, K 2018, 'Ethics, universality and vulnerability in Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako (2006) and Timbuktu (2014)', Paragraph , vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 167-183. https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2018.0261

Ince, K 2013, 'Feminist phenomenology and the film-world of Agnès Varda', Hypatia A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 602-617. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01303.x

Ince, K 2013, 'Women’s Filmmaking in France 2000-2010', Studies in European Cinema, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 3-10. https://doi.org/10.1386/seci.10.1.3_2

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Ince, K 2022, Varda's Sans toit ni loi/Vagabond (1985): the center of my feminist film teaching, 1998–2020. in C Kennedy-Karpat & F Cicekoglu (eds), The Sustainable Legacy of Agnès Varda: Feminist Practice and Pedagogy. 1st edn, Bloomsbury Publishing, London & New York, pp. 143-148. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350240933.ch-12

Ince, K 2018, Feminist phenomenology and Jean-Pierre Meunier's 'The Structures of the Film Experience'. in J Hanich & D Fairfax (eds), The Structures of the Film Experience. Film Theory in Media History, Amsterdam University Press, The Structures of the Film Experience International Symposium , Frankfurt , Germany, 23/11/17.

Chapter

Ince, K 2023, Anthropological documentary filmmaking in Niger: Mariama Hima Yankori and 'Baabu Banza' (1984). in S van der Peer, L Bisschoff & A Grgic (eds), Women's global film heritage.

Ince, K 2023, The Psychology and Phenomenology of Play in Céline Sciamma's 'Petite Maman' (2021). in K Fuery (ed.), Film Phenomenologies: Temporality, Embodiment, Transformation. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Ince, K 2017, Global Women's Cinema. in RS, C Paul, S Dennison & A Marlow-Mann (eds), The Routledge Companion to World Cinema. Routledge.

Ince, K, Boulé, JP & Tidd, U 2012, Feminist Phenomenology and the Films of Sally Potter. in Existentialism and Contemporary Cinema: A Beauvoirian Perspective. Berghahn Books.

Book/Film/Article review

Ince, K 2024, 'Kelli Fuery (2022). Ambiguous Cinema: From Simone de Beauvoir to Feminist Film Phenomenology' Film-Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 136-139. https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2024.0260

Ince, K 2022, 'ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon. Edited by Loïc Bourdeau' French Studies, vol. 76, no. 4, pp. 687–688. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knac162

Other contribution

Ince, K 2015, Fantasy, Fairy Tale, and Feminism? Eyes without a Face. British Film Institute, London.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

French cinema; French 20th century thought; feminist history and theory