Centre for Cultural Studies Research

Ien Ang is currently Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. She has been at the forefront of Cultural Studies for more than twenty years, and is the author of several books including Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination (1985), which pioneered the cultural analysis of media audiences and popular cultural consumption, and On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West (2001), an analysis of the politics of nation, migration, hybridity and cultural globalisation from a diasporic Chinese perspective. Her current work addresses the possibilities and practices of cultural research in conditions of massive cultural complexity, with a special focus on multiculturalism, media and cultural institutions. For further information see http://www.uws.edu.au/ccr

Jody Berland is Associate Professor of Humanities, York University,Toronto. She has published widely on cultural studies, Canadian communication theory, music and media, cultural studies of nature,and the cultural technologies of space. She is co-editor of several books, most recently Cultural Capital: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions and the Value(s) of Art, McGill-Queen's University Press (2000), and  the editor of Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (www.yorku.ca/topia).   North of Empire is forthcoming with Duke University Press, 2009.  “Cat and Mouse: Iconographies of Nature and Desire” (Cultural Studies, Spring 2008) and “Animal as Medium” (Global South, Spring 2009) are part of her current research project on virtual menageries.

Rosi Braidotti is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She has published extensively in feminist philosophy, epistemology, poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. Her books include Patterns of Dissonance, Polity Press, 1991; Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994; Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Polity Press, 2002. She has co-edited the following: Women, the Environment, and Sustainable Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis (with E.Charkiewicz, S. Hausler and S. Wieringa) Zed Books, 1994; Between Monsters, Goddesses and Cyborgs (with Nina Lykke) Zed Books, 1996; Thinking Differently: A European Women’s Studies Reader (with Gabriele Griffin) Zed Books, 2002; and numerous essays and chapters in various texts. Her latest book is Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, Polity Press, 2006. For more information see http://www.let.uu.nl/~Rosi.Braidotti/personal/

 Erica Carter is Deputy Head of the Department of German Studies at Warwick University. She was co-founder (with Chris Turner) of the translation cooperative Material Word, a major publication of which was the translation of Klaus Theweleit's two volume Männerphantasien/Male Fantasies (1987 & 1989). She was Director of Lectures and Seminars at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London from 1986-8, after which she returned to lecturing and refocused her research around cultural studies and film history, the field in which she has published extensively. She is managing editor of the cultural studies journal New Formations. Her major publications include Dietrich's Ghosts. The Sublime and the Beautiful in Third Reich Film (BFI 2004); The German Cinema Book (co-edited with Tim Bergfelder and Deniz Göktürk, BFI 2002): How German is She? Post-war West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman' (University of Michigan Press, 1997): Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location, and Cultural Remix: Theories of Politics and the Popular (both co-edited with James Donald and Judith Squires, Lawrence and Wishart, 1993 & 1995): Taking Liberties. AIDS and Cultural Politics (co-edited with Simon Watney, Serpents Tail 1989).

Kuan-Hsing Chen is Professor in the Center for Asia-Pacific/ Cultural Studies, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He has held visiting professorships at universities in Singapore, Korea, China, Japan, and the U.S. He has published extensively in both Chinese and English, including edited volumes in English: Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (Routledge 1996) and Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge 1998); and in Chinese: Cultural Studies in Taiwan (2000) and The Partha Chatterjee Seminar--Locating Political Society: Modernity, State Violence and Postcolonial Democracies (2000). His own books include Media/Cultural Criticism: A Popular-Democratic Line of Flight (1992, in Chinese), and The Imperialist Eye (2003, in Korean). Towards de-imperialization—Asia as method (2006, in Chinese) is a more recent publication. He was founding chair of the Cultural Studies Association, Taiwan and is on the board of the international Association for Cultural Studies. A member of the Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, he has been a co-executive editor of the journal, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies since 2000.

Tony Dowmunt is the Course Convenor for MA Screen Documentary at Goldsmiths, University of London and recently completed a Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts, funded by the AHRC. His Fellowship was a project investigating autobiographical documentary and the video diary form, in both theory and practice. Previously, as well as teaching, he worked as a television Producer/Director for twenty five years, and as a community media activist. His most recent work involved innovative arts documentaries. His other research interests include 'alternative media' and the growing field of practice research in the moving image. He is a founder member of the steering group of AVPhD, a training organisation for all those involved in audio-visual practice/research doctorates.

Maud Ellmann was educated at Cambridge, Oxford and the Université de Paris, Sorbonne and  was formerly a Reader in Modern Literature at King's College, University of Cambridge, Ellmann is a leading literary scholar whose publications include The Poetics of Impersonality: T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (1987), The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing and Imprisonment (1993) and Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism (1994). Her latest book, Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow Across the Page (2003) has recently been awarded the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for 2004 for the book of the year on a literary topic.

Johan Fornäs is Professor of Mediated Culture at the Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q: http://www.isak.liu.se/temaq/) and Director of the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS: http://www.acsis.liu.se), both at Linköping University, Sweden. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research (http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/) and was Vice Chair of the international Association for Cultural Studies (ACS, 2004-2008). His background is in musicology, youth culture research and media and communication studies, with publications such as Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (1995), In Garageland: Rock, Youth and Modernity (1995), Digital Borderlands: Cultural Studies of Identity and Interactivity on the Internet (2002), and Consuming Media: Communication, Shopping and Everyday Life (2007). http://www.johanfornas.se/

Chris Hables Gray is a Professor in the Graduate College of The Union Institute and University and lectures for Crown College at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is author of Postmodern War, Cyborg Citizen, and Peace, War and Computers and edited The Cyborg Handbook. Currently he is working on information theory, on the role of technology in augmenting political participation, and on the relationship of evolution to human culture. His web site is: http://www.chrishablesgray.org

Lawrence Grossberg  is an internationally renowned scholar of cultural studies and popular culture whose work focuses primarily on popular music and the politics of youth in the United States. He is also widely known for his research in the philosophy of communication and culture. Though his scholarship focused significantly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s on the politics of postmodernism, his more recent work explores the possibilities and limitations of alternative and emergent formations of modernity. He has not only published books, such as It's a Sin: Essays on Postmodernism, Politics and Culture (1988), We Gotta  Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture (1992), Dancing in Spite of Myself: Essays in Popular Culture (1997) and Caught in the Crossfire: Kids, Politics and America’s Future

Judith Halberstam is Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity and Gender Studies at USC. Halberstam works in the areas of popular, visual and queer culture with an emphasis on subcultures. Halberstam has published several books including:Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (1995),Female Masculinity (1998), andIn a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005), Halberstam was also the co-author with Del LaGrace Volcano of a photo/essay book, The Drag King Book (1999), and with Ira Livingston of an anthology, Posthuman Bodies (1995). Halberstam is working on a book about knowledge production and another for Reaktion Books called BAT.This semester, Halberstam is teaching a course on Queer Theory/Feminism and New Media which features sections on surveillance cameras, net art, hack-tivism, animation and queer code.

Stuart Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica and was educated in Jamaica and at Merton College, Oxford (Rhodes Scholar). He came to prominence at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and thereafter as Professor of Sociology at the Open University from 1979. He is currently emeritus at The Open University and Visiting Professor, Goldsmith's College. He was Research Fellow and then Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Publications in cultural theory and cultural studies, race, ethnicity and cultural identity include Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures (1972), Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse (1973), Policing the Crisis (1978), The Hard Road to Renewal (1988), Resistance Through Rituals (1989), Modernity and Its Future (1992), The Formation of Modernity (1992), Questions of Cultural Identity (1996), Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997) and Visual Culture (1999)

Donna J. Haraway  is Professor and Chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology (1976), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©Meets_ OncoMouse (1997, Ludwig Fleck Prize), The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003), and When Species Meet (2008).  In september, 2000, Haraway was awarded the highest honor given by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), the J D Bernal Award, for lifetime contributions to the field. She is a leading thinker about people's love and hate relationship with machines and the complexities of animal/human naturecultures. Her ideas have sparked an explosion of debate in areas as diverse as primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. Photo: Donna Haraway with Cayenne by Rusten Hogness.

Mark Hathaway is the Head of Finance & Resources of Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) based at Rivington Place.  He studied history at Birkbeck College under Ben Fine and Roderick Floud; subsequently he held a research studentship at Oxford University where he also taught modern history.  His research focused on the economic and social development of leisure in England, 1850-1920.  He then trained with the National Audit Office, working as a parliamentary auditor, was Assistant Registrar at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Head of Finance at Visiting Arts and worked at Artsadmin for six years before joining Iniva.

David Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media and Music Industries and Director of the Media Industries Research Centre (MIRC, ics.leeds.ac.uk/micrc/index.cfm) at the University of Leeds. Much of his research has been about questions of power, meaning and pleasure in music. He is the author of The Cutlural Industries (2002 and 2007, tinyurl.com/63qv96) and co-editor of The Media & Social Theory (2008, tinyurl.com/6b5g79), Media Production (2006), Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity (2005), Popular Music Studies (2002) and Western Music & Its Others: Difference, Representation & Appropriation in Music (2000).

Reina Lewis is Artscom Centenary Professor of Cultural Studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London. Her current research breaks down into two interconnected areas - feminist postcolonial studies (concerned predominantly with relations between Islam and the west), and lesbian, gay, and queer studies (concerned mainly with the role of dress in the formulation of sexed and gendered identities). She is the author of Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel & the Ottoman Harem (London: IB Taurus, New York: Rutgers, 2004) and Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity & Representation (London: Routledge, 1996). She is also co-editor of (with Nancy Micklewright) Gender, Modernity & Liberty: Middle Eastern & Western Feminisms: A Critical Reader (IB Taurus, 2006) and (with Sara Mills) Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2003). Having written on lesbian dress and visual pleasure, and always keen for a reason to dress up, her new work in this field is being developed as part of an ongoing performance piece called 'Out of the closet and into the wardrobe'. Photo by Neil Turner ©TSL Education

Áine O'Brien is Director of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, Dublin Institute of Technology. Combining a background in cultural studies, visual culture and media production, she has taught in the US and Britain, publishing articles on a range of topics, including music and migration, narratives of nation and gender within Irish public culture, and the application of critical and cultural theory in practice-led research. She is co-editor of Projecting Migration: Trancultural Documentary Practice (2007, Wallflower Press). Her film production includes the co-direction of a performative documentary (Silent Song, 2000) on Kurdish lyrical protest in Europe, in addition to Here To Stay (2006) and Between Promise and Unrest (2007) on the subject of gendered migration. She is Director of FOMACS (Forum on Migration and Communications) – a three-year media-driven programme producing print, photographic, broadcast and interactive stories on the topic of immigration and integration, with the aim of reaching and engaging diverse audiences and constituencies.

Bill Schwarz is Reader in the Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London. His research focuses on postcolonial history, with particular emphasis on the end of the British empire. Most of his recent work has concentrated on Caribbean writing of the twentieth century, both fiction and non-fiction. He addresses too historiographical questions concerning the theoretical underpinnings of postcolonial history, and the relations between history and memory. Most recently he has edited West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (2003), The Locations of George Lamming (2007), and Caribbean Literature After Independence: the Case of Earl Lovelace (2008). He is an editor of History Workshop Journal, New Formations and Visual Culture in Britain. He is currently writing a short booked provisionally called How Britons Came to Know US Civil Rights and Black Power.

Nancy Schiesari has directed, produced and been a cinematographer on both broadcast documentaries and narrative features for over twenty years. She produced and directed "Tattooed Under Fire" and "Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer", that premiered on PBS and Independent Lens. Her other works as director include History Man, a Portrait of Martin Scorsese, for the BBC, and Green Flutes, a feature documentary for England¹s Channel 4. Nancy has experience as a Director of Photography on over 30 documentaries and feature
films broadcast for England¹s Channel 4, BBC, ABC, National Geographic, and PBS. She was nominated for a 2002 Television Emmy for outstanding cinematography on The Human Face (producer John Cleese). Among her work as cinematographer is Ken Mc Mullen¹s 35mm Channel 4 feature film, Partition, Bennie Klain¹s PBS documentary, Weaving Worlds- How the West was Spun, and Pratibha Parmar¹s and Alice Walker¹s, Warrior Marks, Channel 4. She has an MFA from the Royal College of Art in London and is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches Filmmaking and Cinematography. She is co-founder and co-director of the UT Documentary
Center. http://utdoccenter.org/faculty/schiesari/

Gillian Swanson is Reader in Cultural History at the University of the West of England, Bristol.  Her research focuses on the cultural history of private life; urban cultures of entertainment and consumption, the management of sexual character in post-war Britain, and more recently, the emergence of psychopathology in Britain and its influence on the idea of the cultural. Her most recent book is Drunk with the Glitter: Space Consumption and Sexual Instability in Modern Urban Culture (2007). She is currently working on a series of articles on the psychopathologist William McDougall’s model of character, consciousness and experience, and a book, Cultural History: Detail and Intimacy (Routledge). Gillian is co-editor (with Ben Highmore) of the forthcoming Routledge book series New Directions in Cultural History.

Tiziana Terranova is Associate Professor in Sociology of Communications and Cultural Studies at the Università degli Studi di Napoli
'L'Orientale'. She is the author of Network Culture (Pluto Press, 2004) and of many essays on the cultural politics of new media in Social Text,
Theory Culture and Society, Parallax, Mute, C-Theory and others.

Handel Kashope Wright is Canada Research Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies, David Lam Chair of Multicultural Education, Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education and Professor in the Educational Studies Department at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Handel's praincipal activist and progressive community organising work is with the Highlander Research and Education Center, New Market, Tennessee, where he serves on the executive committee of the Center's working board of directors. He is co-editor of International Education, and serves on the editorial board of several cultural studies and education journals including Cultural Studies, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Topia, Critical Arts, The Canadian Journal of Education and The Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education. He has published extensively on African and diasporic cultural studies, cultural studies of education, post-reconceptualization curriculum theorizing, critical multiculturalism, anti-racist education and qualitiative research. His recent publications include A Prescience of African Cultural Studies (Lang, 2004) and several edited and co-edited journal issues, including a co-edited themed issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies (26: 2-3, 2004) on Cultural Studies and Education, a co-edited themed issue of The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education on Paradigm Porliferation in Educational Research and an edited themed issue of International Education (36: 1, 2006) on Africans and Western Discourses of Empowerment.

Joanna Zylinska is a Reader in New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of three books: Bioethics in the Age of New Media (MIT Press, 2009), The Ethics of Cultural Studies (Continuum, 2005) and On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: the Feminine and the Sublime (Manchester University Press, 2001). She is also the editor of The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, a collection of essays on the work of performance artists Stelarc and Orlan (Continuum, 2002) and co-editor of Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). She is involved in the running of Culture Machine <www.culturemachine.net>, an international open-access journal of culture and theory. Most recently she has been combining her philosophical writings with photographic art practice. www.joannazylinska.net