Research interests
Most of my work has been concerned with issues raised by special effects technologies in film. My PhD thesis ‘Special Effects and the Aesthetics of Illusion’ (2003) connects discourses around 19th-century magic theatre and the reception of early cinema to the development of sophisticated mechanisms for the production of visual illusions up to the present day. This research has led to the publication of a monograph about special effects, Performing Illusions: Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor (Wallflower Press, 2008). My current research is around ideas of virtual performance with a particular interest in puppetry on film.
Prior to my appointment as a lecturer in film at the University of Exeter, I was employed by the School of English as a research fellow working with papers donated to the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture by the British film-maker Don Boyd. This extensive archival project produced a preservational space and online database for several thousand items of interest to scholars of British cinema. Inspired by this archival work, I have put together a collection of essays by leading British cinema scholars, Sights Unseen: Unfinished British Films (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008). This project foregrounds the role of archival materials in recovering incomplete film texts and rendering them valuable to historians as cultural moments.
Aside from these academic pursuits, my interest in cinema can be diverted in almost any direction. I have a fondness for martial arts films, East Asian (un)popular cinema, animation, Godard, Ozu, Tarr, Chaplin, Keaton and more. Though I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, I’ve dabbled in studies of early film, which still fascinates me. All of these sideline interests seep into my teaching from time to time.
Stumble It!
