Expertise Summary

Cinema of Jia Zhangke; Film phenomenology; Contemporary Chinese film; Chinese visual culture

Research Interests

• Chinese art film
• Chinese visual culture
• Film phenomenology
• Film theory
• Film studies
• Museum studies
• Affect studies
• Cultural studies
• Representation of Jews and Jewishness in China

Orcid Account: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7866-2264

I was appointed Associate Professor in International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in September, 2019.  Previously, I taught at the University of Southampton, Goldsmiths (University of London), and the University of California at Berkeley.  I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now AdvanceHE) in 2012. At the Southampton University Students Union Academic Awards in 2017, I received the “Highly Commended: Most Engaging Lecturer” award for Humanities, and in 2021 I received University of Nottingham's Lord Dearing Award for Teaching and Learning.

I have a PhD from Goldsmiths (Media & Communications), and a MA in Asian Studies (China Concentration) from UC Berkeley. I have also studied at Tsinghua University (Beijing) as well as Fudan University (Shanghai) where I was a recipient of the Canada-China Scholars' Exchange Program (CCSEP, funded by the China Scholarship Council).

My areas of research are contemporary Chinese visual culture, memory studies, and film phenomenology. In 2016, I received a grant from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Sir Ernest Cassel Trust for my project "Sites of Commemoration: Contemporary Chinese Commemorative Museums and Affective Experience." This grant has led to my current research project, “Sites and Sights of Commemoration,” which examines the ways specific Chinese episodes of trauma have recently been commemorated in state-funded Chinese museums and films, and interrogates the ways that these “sites” and “sights” discursively, representationally, and affectively create meaning. In addition to this project, I am also currently exploring representations of Jews and Jewishness in contemporary China. I am a former Member and currently an Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish / Non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton, and was a Sproul Fellow at the Berkeley Canadian Studies Program, University of California at Berkeley.

• INCM4036: Chinese Cinemas
• INCM4039: Media & Communication Research Methods 2
• INCM2026: Researching Communications 1
• INCM2027: Researching Communications 2
• INCM2043: Reading Film & Television
• UG Dissertation Supervision
• MA Dissertation Supervision

I have supervised PhD dissertations to completion in film studies, and am currently supervising PhD research projects on Chinese film.