Communication, Cultural and Media Studies

Overview

The Subject Area provides a focus for research that theorises and analyses how the representation, practice and experience of difference connect to structures of power and inequality, and inform discriminatory practices and policies.

Groups and Centres

Research is organised within the Centre for the Study of Inequality, Culture and Difference, with our researchers dedicated to the exploration of how such representations, practices and experiences have been contested and reproduced.

The Centre brings together five main research groups, each of which serves as a focal point for colleagues from the different teaching teams:

• Research on Gender and Sexuality is a particular strength of our research and plays a key role in the work of the research centre. Within the broader topic of gender and sexuality, we focus on gender theory, queer theory and politics, feminism and postfeminism, masculinities, gender and migration, transnational sexualities, and neoliberalism and gender.
• Continuing a proud tradition of research on culture and globalisation at NTU, the Globalisation, Migration and Diaspora research group conducts work analysing important aspects of globalisation, both contemporary and more historical.
• Researchers in the Language, Power and Institution research group bring analytical skills and insights drawn from critical journalism studies, socio-linguistics, forensic linguistics, critical stylistics, cultural studies and political communication to bear on a wide range of institutions and social practices.
• Research in the Media and Film Cultures research group is a long-standing strength of our Subject Area. While some of our work in this area focuses on British media and British cultural production, much of it is transnational or international, if not global, in its reach.
• The Philosophy, Culture and Everyday Life research group brings thinkers like Gramsci, Adorno and Bakhtin to bear on areas such as popular music, food and travel cultures and film comedy. It probes questions around science and bioethics or atheism and belief drawing on philosophical tools.

Research staff interests

Alexander, Colin: Propaganda; Asian political history (particularly North Korea and Taiwan), foreign aid and development assistance; public diplomacy and soft power; colonialism (particularly colonial India); charity and philanthropy.

Allwood, Gill: Gender and violence; Feminist theory; Gender and policy, especially in relation to the EU; Gender, development and climate change.

Bailey, Olga: Alternative media; global and transnational communication; communication of minority and diasporic groups; migrant women and empowerment, journalism and democracy, and digital cultures.

Braber, Natalie: Language variation in the East Midlands; the ‘Pit Talk’ language of East Midlands coal miners; language and identity; language and emotion.

Çakirlar, Cuneyt: Queer Studies; transnational sexuality studies; film theory, film aesthetics, world cinemas: visual cultures and contemporary visual arts; culture and globalization.

Coffey-Glover, Laura: Feminist/critical discourse analysis; corpus linguistics; mediated constructions of gender and sexuality in popular culture.

Fuggle, Sophie: French and European theory; Space and identity; The colonial prison and penal heritage; cultural representations of incarceration.

Hardy, Francesca: Film and theory. Cinema and the senses in relation to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy; film and the body; film and waste; the end of the world in European film and television.

Lee, Nikki: Transnational stardom, genre-branding, auteur-branding; film festivals, and globalisation; East Asian cinemas and popular culture, including Japanese and Korean TV dramas and K-pop.

Lundy, Craig: Social and political theory/philosophy; critical and cultural theory; 19th/20th century European philosophy (esp. Deleuze and Bergson); philosophy of history; science and technology studies; public sociology.

McCaffrey, Enda: The medical humanities; Critical and Queer theory; Ecopoetics; Contemporary literature; Continental Philosophy.

O'Connor, Patrick: Phenomenology; 19th and 20th Century European philosophy; atheism in existential thought; the history of philosophy; the philosophy of education; the philosophy of literature.

O’Shaughnessy, Martin: The politics of French and other European cinemas; Cinema and work; Cinema and the crisis of neoliberalism.

Poberezhskaya, Marianna: Russian climate policy; Mainstream and new media and their response to climate change, especially in Russia.

Wittel, Andreas: The political economy of digital media; sharing, collaboration, gifts and the commons; anonymity and surveillance; ethnography and social relationships.

Wright, David: Forensic linguistics; the application of language analysis to help improve the delivery of justice; aspects of language and law; language in the legal process; language as evidence.