The Project Team
Sarah Arnold is Assistant Professor in Media at Maynooth University.
My research focuses on the relationship between women and media work both in the past and present. This includes women’s production practices, their creativity and craft and their roles in emerging media. I am co-PI on the IRC/AHRC Digital Humanities project ‘Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing.’ I am a researcher on the ‘MotherNet’ project funded by the EU Twinning programme and I am a manager and work package leader on the CERV-funded ‘GEMINI’ project which aims to encourage young learners to tackle gender-based stereotypes through their creation of media products.
My publications include Gender and Early Television: Mapping Women's Role in Emerging US and British. Media, 1850-1950 (Bloomsbury, 2021); Media Graduates at Work: Irish Narratives on Policy, Education and Industry (Palgrave, 2021) with Anne O’Brien and Páraic Kerrigan; Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood (Palgrave, 2013) and The Film Handbook (Routledge, 2013) with Mark de Valk. I have also published in journals such as Women’s History Review, Cultural Trends, and Industry and Higher Education.
Keith M. Johnston is Professor of Film & Television Studies at the University of East Anglia.
My research focuses on the interplay of technology, aesthetics and industry in British mainstream and amateur cinema. I am the UK lead on two amateur film projects: the SSHRC-funded ‘International Amateur Cinema between the Wars, 1919-39’ and the AHRC-IRC-funded ‘Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing’.
My publications include Colour Films in Britain: The Eastmancolor Revolution (Bloomsbury 2021), Invisible Innovators: Making Women Filmmakers Visible Across the UK Film Archives (2020), Ealing Revisited (BFI Palgrave 2012), Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury 2011) and Coming Soon: Film Trailers and the Selling of Hollywood Technology (McFarland 2009).
Dr Carolann Madden is the Postdoctoral Research Associate on the project at Maynooth University.
My areas of research include: women’s methods of cultural production, material and expressive culture, folklore, and the archiving and cataloguing of material culture. I am a recent Fulbright recipient, and an ongoing digital exhibit of my Fulbright research on archives of early folklore collecting in the West of Ireland can be found at www.thiarwest.com.
I worked as a project archivist on the KUHT Public Television Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Archives of American Art Microfilm Project. Prior to joining the Women in Focus team, I was an assistant archivist for the William J. Hill Archive, where she also held a Research Fellowship for her research on born-digital archives.
Dr Paul Frith is Senior Research Associate on the project at the University of East Anglia.
I previously worked as a Conservation Specialist at the British Film Institute (2013-2016) and as a post-doctoral researcher on the projects ‘The Eastmancolor Revolution and British Cinema, 1955-85’ (2016-19) and ‘International Amateur Cinema Between the Wars, 1919-39’ (2020-2022). My work on amateur cinema has been published in Film History, Screen, and features in the co-authored book Colour Films in Britain: The Eastmancolor Revolution (BFI/Bloomsbury, 2021).
Research interests include: distribution and exhibition of amateur cinema; amateur cine clubs in Britain; film censorship and horror cinema. His forthcoming monograph, British Horror Cinema and Censorship, 1925-65, is due to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024.
Zoë Viney Burgess is Research Associate on the project at the University of East Anglia.
I am a final year Postgraduate Researcher in Film at the University of Southampton and also work as Film Curator at Wessex Film and Sound Archive (WFSA) in Winchester, UK. My research focusses on gender and class in the amateur film collection of WFSA between 1895 and 1950. At the University of Southampton I have taught on the MA Film, MA Film and Cultural Management and on the MA Global Media Management courses.
I have been involved in a number of UoS research projects including with the Social Practices Lab at Winchester School of Art and with the school of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics on the Investigating Incel Identity project. I was the lead organiser for a major international conference in June 2022, hosted by the International Centre for Film Research celebrating the centenary of 9.5mm film.
I joined the Women in Focus team in September 2023.