Current Research Students
Anna-Mari Almila (annamari.almila@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Visual Culture and Sociology
Anna-Mari received her BA and MA in Art and Design (Clothing Design) from University of Lapland, Finland. Her MA dissertation ‘In Light, in Shadow: The professional clothing picture of Finnish popular music musicians’ explored the social meanings, and influences of others relevant to public clothing strategies of performing musicians. Anna-Mari has worked in the clothing design field in projects concerning functional and medical hospital clothing, as well as fashion collection development with an international team, a collection published by KAZU in Zürich Fashion Days in November 2010. Anna-Mari’s doctoral research in the areas of Visual Culture and Sociology considers Muslim women’s clothing pictures as expression of identity, group identity, religion and politics in Western cultures, especially in Finland and Scotland.
Rachele Ceccarelli (r.ceccarelli@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Modern Thought and Visual Culture
'The Ethics of the Photographic Medium: An Analysis of the Revisionist Criticism of Photographic Realism in Relatino to the Ethical Role of the Artist'
Alan Dodd (a.dodd@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Film Studies
Edith Doron (e.doron@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Modern Thought
'Teaching in the Gap between World and Plaything: From Cosmopolitan Solidarity to Exilic Education in Children's Museums'
Annette Duecker (r01akd7@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in German
Annette studied Cultural Sciences, German literature and film in the 90s at Humboldt Universität in Berlin, when the city’s transition after reunification had just begun. This was when she developed an interest in processes of urban transition and their reflections in the arts. After receiving her MA she started teaching German at the International Study Centre Heidelberg. At the same time Annette participated in various academic projects and became an active member of the Georg Simmel Graduate (GSG) Studies group, a network of PhD students from various disciplines, who share an interest in processes of urban transformation. In her doctoral research she explores the cinematographic aesthetics of a group of filmmakers who live in Berlin, and are known as the “Berlin School” or “Nouvelle Vague Allemande”. Their cinematography distinguishes itself by a domination of description over narration, of presence over meaning, in short by an implicit politics of the cinematographic picture. Annette is concerned with what is specific in aesthetic representations and the question of how aesthetic representations offer unique access to an alternative understanding of presence.
Alex Forbes (r01atf0@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Modern Thought
‘Perestroika in European Cinema: 1989-1994’
Cameron McEwan (ckmcewan@btinternet.com)
PhD in Film Studies and Visual Culture
As a mature student, Cameron returned to full-time education in 2005 and was part of the first year to graduate in the recently established MA in Film & Visual Culture, receiving first class honours. During this time he produced an award-winning film, ABZ, which was shown as an installation for three weeks in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, and was also fortunate enough to work under Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, becoming his teaching assistant the following year. Cameron received a school-funded scholarship to undertake an MLitt in Visual Culture where he produced another film under Ruiz and a documentary featuring cult Hollywood director Alex Cox. For his PhD, Cameron is studying the work of photographer George Washington Wilson; a man who was amongst the most successful photographers around the globe during the late 1800s. The study will be the first of its kind to investigate the stylistic tropes and historical context in which the images were taken; comparing and contrasting them with Wilson's photographs from the many countries where his company visited in the creation of their very own Victorian worldwide web. Cameron also assists with teaching in various practical and theoretical courses within the Film & Visual Culture department.
Lorna Muir (lemuir@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in French
I am currently in the final year of my PhD at the University of Aberdeen. My project considers how cinema’s mapping of surveillance societies can be said to address the emerging hybrid state in the shift from Michel Foucault’s notion of discipline to Gilles Deleuze’s paradigm of the control society. I have given papers at the IGRS forum, London (Control after the Panopticon? : The Transition from a Society of Discipline to Control in Harun Farocki's Ich glaubte Gefangene zu sehen), and at the ISA World Congress of Sociology, Sweden (Assemblages, Data Doubles and Deleuze’s Dividual: Cinematic Representations of the ‘Control’ Body). I was also one of the organisers for the postgraduate ‘Rethinking Complicity and Resistance: The Relationship between Visual Arts and Politics’ conference at the University of Aberdeen. I completed both my MLitt (Visual Culture) and MA (French and German) in Aberdeen
Chris Heppell (r01cjh0@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Visual Culture and Modern Thought
Chris received his BA in English Lit and History of Art from York University and completed his MLitt in Comparative Literature and Thought at the University of Aberdeen, with distinction. His dissertation comprised a reading of Roberto Bolano's novel 2666 utilizing the writings of G.W. Leibniz and Gilles Deleuze's work on the thought of the baroque. His doctoral research in the areas of Visual Culture and Modern Thought considers landscape photographs and installations as sites for attesting contemporary speculative materialist geo-philosophies. Chris is concerned with how new theories might suggest a properly ecological encounter with landscape, and how the visual arts redistribute configurations of sensible material suggesting the capacity for political change. Chris' research is focused on artists living and working in Iceland: contemporary work engaging with the collapse of the Icelandic banking system, the melting of the glaciers, and the recent eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Chris is a keen landscape photographer and has held two exhibitions of his work, which has also been published in Frieze magazine.
Keava McMillan (r05km0@abdn.ac.uk)
MLitt in Visual Culture
Keava graduated from the University of Aberdeen in July 2009. Through her undergraduate dissertation on Frida Kahlo, she was struck by how the literature dealing with the artist focused almost exclusively on the effect of her gender, nationality, and personal life on her work while ignoring the considerable influence of her politics. This developed into an interest in the themes of memory and commemoration, and eventually the way in which museums and galleries represent visual art, and become the main arbiters of cultural memory. Keava intends to concentrate her research on how Eastern European museums, specifically those that represent the Soviet era, deal with themes such as culpability and victimization by comparing the methods used in these institutions to museums in western Europe dedicated to traumatic events which happened within living memory. She is fascinated by the role that museums dedicated to traumatic events have in establishing our collective memory.
Fiona Noble (r01fn9@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Hispanic Studies
Fiona completed her MA in French and Hispanic Studies at the University of Aberdeen in 2007. During her undergraduate studies, she followed modules in French and Latin American Cinema, and wrote her dissertation on the representation of the past in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. She returned to the University in September 2008 to undertake her postgraduate studies, completing her MLitt in Visual Culture with Distinction in September 2009. As part of her MLitt, she worked once again on the films of Pedro Almodóvar, on the films of Ventura Pons, and the artwork of Salvador Dalí. In September 2009, she began her PhD, also at the University of Aberdeen. Her doctoral research is interdisciplinary, spanning the departments of Hispanic Studies and Film and Visual Culture. The project explores representations of the body in Spanish cinema, and will focus on distinct bodily types, including the child’s body, the performing body, and the trans- (sexual/vestite) body. Wider issues informing her research include a questioning of the limits and boundaries of what constitutes Spanish cinema, and a potential moving beyond the discourse of body as nation in cinematic discourse.
Ian Ross (r01ijr0@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Hispanic Studies
Ian studied Hispanic Studies at undergraduate level at the University of Aberdeen during which he developed an interest in Hispanic visual culture. To pursue this interest further he continued his studies with the MLitt in Latin American Studies combined with a selection of courses from the MLitt Visual Culture program. His interests include Hispanic cinema, the subject of both his undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations –his undergraduate dissertation used the notion of the political body to examine three of Almodóvar's recent films. His MLitt Dissertation, 'The Battle to Remember: Trauma, memory and the spectre of Allende in Patricio Guzmán's La batalla de Chile and La memoria obstinada' explored the Chilean director's documentary work and the legacy of the Pinochet Coup d'état and dictatorship. His doctoral studies will explore reactions to violence in Spanish film and visual culture.
Calum Waddell (r01crw9@abdn.ac.uk)
PhD in Film Studies
Born and raised in Fife, Scotland, Calum studied English at Stirling University before taking on a Masters course in Film Production. His current research focuses on American exploitation cinema, its heyday during the turbulent social climate of the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle and rising gender and sexual awareness, and how this type of filmmaking "subverted" (and perhaps even perverted!) the Hollywood mainstream. Outside of his PhD, Calum is a film critic and author whose work is published in several UK magazines including Bizarre, DVD World, Empire, Impact, Sci-Fi Now, SFX and many more. His books include Minds of Fear (2005), Taboo Breakers (2008) and Jack Hill: The Exploitation and Blaxploitation Master (2009) and he has also directed numerous documentary supplements for nationwide DVD releases including such recognised classics such as Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Deep Red (1975) and Inferno (1980), Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971), Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse (1981) and George Romero's Day of the Dead (1985). In addition Calum has recorded insightful audio commentaries for the DVD releases of numerous cult horror films including Tobe Hooper's Toolbox Murders (2004), Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (1980) and The Beyond (1981), the Grace Jones shocker Vamp (1986) and the infamous Greek "video nasty" Island of Death (1977).