Our members
Centre Directors
Professor Kirsty Fairclough
I am Professor of Screen Studies specialising in the intersections of screen cultures, popular music, film and celebrity. My research explores the ways in which popular culture shapes and reflects society, with a particular focus on music documentary, celebrity culture, and the evolving relationship between sound and visual media. I have published widely on these subjects and my work often addresses the mediation of celebrity, the politics of representation in music documentary, and the impact of digital technologies on cultural production and consumption.
Key Publications:
K. Fairclough (forthcoming) This is Me: Interrogating the Female Pop Documentary. Bloomsbury.
K. Fairclough and B. Halligan (2023) Diva: Feminism and Fierceness from Pop to Hip-Hop. Bloomsbury.
K. Fairclough and J. Wod (2022) Pop Stars on Film: Popular Culture in a Global Market. Bloomsbury.
Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn is Reader in Film Studies and American Studies, and is co-director of the Popular Screen Cultures at Manchester Metropolitan University. Ní Fhlainn has published widely in the fields of Gothic and Horror Studies and Popular Film, specialising in monsters, subjectivity, and US cultural history, as well as on popular directors and stars. She is the author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019), winner of the 2020 Lord Ruthven Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. She is currently working on the long 1980s onscreen.
Key Publications:
S. Ní Fhlainn (2019) Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction and Popular Culture. Palgrave.
S. Ní Fhlainn and B. M. Murphy (eds, 2022) Twentieth-Century Gothic. Edinburgh University Press.
S. Ní Fhlainn (ed, 2017) Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer. Manchester University Press.
S. Ní Fhlainn (2010) The Worlds of Back to the Future. McFarland.
Centre Members
Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes
Xavier Aldana Reyes is a Reader in English Literature and Film who specialises in gothic and horror studies. His books include Contemporary Body Horror (2024), Gothic Cinema (2020) and Horror Film and Affect (2016), among others.
Key publications:
X. Aldana Reyes (2024) Contemporary Body Horror. Cambridge University Press.
X. Aldana Reyes (2020) Gothic Cinema. Routledge.
X. Aldana Reyes (2016) Horror Film and Affect. Routledge.
Dr Eleanor Beal
Dr Eleanor Beal is a Lecturer in English Literature and Film, Co-Director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and on the Executive Committee for University English. She works primarily on contemporary Gothic of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her theoretical interests lie in Gothic approaches to questions of being (ontology), including the Gothic’s cosmologies, occultisms, theological (re)turns and religious afterlives.
Key publications:
E. Beal and J. Greenaway (eds, 2019) Horror and Religion: New Literary Approaches to Theology, Race and Sexuality. University of Wales Press.
E. Beal (2018) ‘Frankensteinian Gods, Fembots and the New Technological Frontier in Alex Garland’s Ex_Machina.’ Transmedia Creatures: Frankenstein’s Afterlives. Bucknell University Press.
Professor Andrew Biswell
Andrew Biswell is Professor of Modern Literature, teaching English and Creative Writing at Manchester Met since 2003. His current projects include a scholarly edition of the works of Anthony Burgess for Manchester University Press, an edition of A Shorter Ulysses, and a monograph about W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Andrew is the winner of the Portico Prize for The Real Life of Anthony Burgess. He was also shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex Award and FutureBook Prize for Digital Innovation.
Key publications:
A. Biswell (2023) Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange. Springer International Press.
A. Burgess and A. Biswell (2013) A Clockwork Orange: Critical Edition. Penguin Classics.
A. Biswell (2006) The Real Life of Anthony Burgess. Pan Macmillan.
Dr Matthew Carter
Dr Matthew Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Film at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is interested in the cultural history of the USA, and his research concerns the impact of frontier mythology and the Hollywood Western on that nation’s society, politics, and sense of identity. His other interests include horror, science fiction, genre theory, and ideology critique.
Key Publications:
M. Carter, M. Paryz, and M. E. Marubbio (2020) Figurations of Settler Colonialism in Contemporary Cinematic Depictions of the US West (Special Issue of Journal of English and American Studies). Walter de Gruyter.
M. Carter and M. Paryz (2018) The Visual Language of Gender and Family in the Western (Special Issue of Papers on Language and Literature). Southern Illinois University.
M. Carter and A. P. Nelson (eds, 2016) The Films of Delmer Daves. Edinburgh University Press.
M. Carter (2014) Myth of the Western. Edinburgh University Press.
Dr Amy C. Chambers
Dr Amy C. Chambers is a science and screen media scholar focused on the intersection of entertainment media and the public understanding of science. Amy’s research interrogates public and popular cultures of science; histories of science and religion in cinema; the mediation of women’s scientific expertise on screen; reading science fiction literature; and women’s creative contributions to science fiction media.
Key Publications:
A. C. Chambers et al. (eds, 2025) Reading Science/Fiction: Sociality, Publics and Pleasures. Palgrave.
A. C. Chambers (2023) ‘Contagion Went Viral: Microbiology, Entertainment Media and the Public Understanding of Science‘, Current Clinical Microbiology Reports.
A. C. Chambers (2022) ”Somewhere Between Science and Superstition’: Religious Outrage, Horrific Science, and The Exorcist (1973)‘, History of the Human Sciences.
Dr Andrew Chrome
I’m a historian who works on religious cultures, particularly relating to apocalypticism, prophecy, and religious identities in popular culture fandom and religious groups.
Key Publications:
T. Sturm and A. Chrome (eds, 2025) Bloomsbury Handbook of Apocalypticism and Millennialism. Bloomsbury.
A. Chrome (2023) ‘Developing Religious Literacy through Popular Culture Fandom: Engaging Religious Issues in Fleabag Fan Fiction‘, Journal of Contemporary Religion.
A. Chrome and J. McGrath (eds, 2013) Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith: Religion and Doctor Who. Cascade.
Dr Samantha Colling
Dr Samantha Colling is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media and has been teaching in the field for more than ten years. She completed her PhD, which explored the relationships between film, pleasure, and affect, at The Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design. Samantha’s monograph The Aesthetic Pleasures of Girl Teen Film (2017) explores new ways of thinking about pleasure and fun in relation to film, with a particular focus on millennial girl teen films and the kinds of affects that they are designed to create.
Key publications:
S. Colling (2017) The Aesthetic Pleasures of Girl Teen Film. Bloomsbury.
S. Colling and A. Hilton (2023) ‘Feeling Like a Teenage Lesbian: the sex scenes in The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) and Make Up (2019)’, in The Sex Scene: Representation, Performance, Aesthetics. Edinburgh University Press.
S. Colling (2016) ‘The pleasures of muscular bonding in Bring It On and Pitch Perfect.’ New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film.
Dr Carmen Herrero
I am a Reader in the Department of Languages, Information and Communications. I am currently one of the University Innovator Scholars at Manchester Metropolitan University, co-leading the Active Learning CoP. With over 35 years of experience in research, teaching, and leadership, I have developed an interdisciplinary profile that encompasses film, screen, and transmedia studies. Furthermore, my scholarly work includes pioneering educational research on the application of screen media in innovative language learning and teaching methodologies.
Key Publications:
C. Herrero and M. F. Suarez (eds, 2023) Teaching Language With Screen Media: Pedagogical Reflections. Bloomsbury.
C. Herrero and I. Vanderschelden (eds, 2019) Using Film and Media in the Language Classroom: Reflections on Research-led Teaching. Multilingual Matters.
Dr Sarah Ilott
Dr Sarah Ilott is Senior Lecturer in English and Film. Her research explores the intersections of anti/racist politics and popular culture, with particular expertise in comedy and the gothic. Her next book, Screening Multicultural Britain: Race, Racism and British Comedy, will be published by Palgrave in 2026.
Key Publications:
S. Ilott (2026) Screening Multicultural Britain: Race, Racism and British Comedy. Palgrave.
S. Ilott and H. Davies (eds, 2018) Comedy and the Politics of Representation: Mocking the Weak. Palgrave.
S. Ilott (2015) New Postcolonial British Genres: Shifting the Boundaries. Palgrave.
Dr Ben Litherland
I am a cultural studies researcher examining how people engage with popular and political communication and culture, both historically and in the present. My current research focuses on these overlaps, using fandom as a lens to analyse a range of phenomena such as ethical consumption, culture wars, conspiracy theories, and political engagement. More broadly, I engage with debates on media influence and media effects, exploring how audiences interact with and are shaped by media. These themes are central to my podcast, Ill Effects, where I examine debates about media influence.
Key publications:
S. Driessen, B. Jones, and B. Litherland (2025) Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom. University of Iowa Press.
B. Litherland (2018) Wrestling in Britain: Sporting Entertainments, Celebrity and Audiences. Routledge.
B. Litherland (2025). ‘Smarter, better, faster, kinder? The problems with claiming that media and popular culture has positive effects.’ International Journal of Cultural Studies.
Dr Reuben Martens
Dr Reuben Martens is a sound artist, poet, screenwriter, and an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. His work is mainly situated within the fields of the energy humanities, ecomedia, video games studies, film studies, sound studies, and critical infrastructure studies.
Key Publications:
D. Janzen and R. Martens (2025) ‘Petrophonics.’ Anthropologica, 66(2), pp. 1-17.
R. Martens (2023) ‘Sunny Side Up: Solarpunk Futures for a Dying World.’ Extrapolation, 64, (1), pp. 33-52.
R. Martens (2021) ‘The Question Concerning Energy: Machinic Ontology and Ecological Crisis in The Matrix Trilogy.’ ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 28(2), pp. 410-35.
Dr Marta F. Suarez
I lecture in the areas of culture, film, and screen media in the Department of Languages, Information and Communication. My current research interests include transmedia storytelling, transnational screens, and the intersections between cross-media adaptations, streaming platforms, and expansive worlds. My publications include research in the areas of character development in The Walking Dead, portrayals of immigration and nation in contemporary Spanish film, and expressions of coloniality, ethnicity and race in fictional constructions of Latin America and Spain.
Key publications:
C. Herrero and M. F. Suarez (2023) Teaching Languages with Screen Media: Pedagogical Reflections. Bloomsbury.
M. F. Suarez (2025) ‘Retracing ripples: water, idleness, and guilt in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta trilogy‘, in Alternative Voices: Artistic Mediations on Female Subjectivities in Spain and Latin America (1920-2020). Springer.
M. F. Suarez (2022) ‘Recovering Memory, Reasserting Europeanness. Modern Convivencia and Hispanotropicalism in Palm Trees in the Snow (2014) and Neckan (2014)’, in The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. Routledge.
Dr Jack Warren
Jack Warren is a Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the Manchester Game Centre. His research interests include video games, queer studies, affect studies, and the environmental humanities.
Key Publications:
J. Warren (2024) ‘Affect Theory.’ The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 31(1).
J. Warren (2024) ‘Queer Thinking with Digital Stones.’ In Environmental Humanities and the Video Game. Palgrave.
J. Warren (2023) ‘Touching Fantasy Role-Play.’ In Material Game Studies. Bloomsbury.