Current Doctoral Students
As part of our postgraduate programmes we have a number of research active PhD students, they include:
- Anne Graefer
- Ashleigh Sawyer
- Bill Roberts
- Gareth Longstaff
- Hazirah Tahamit
- Jayne Goble
- Lina Khoulani
- Robert Cassar
Email: anne.graefer@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Carolyn Pedwell and Dr Stacey Gillis (School of English)
I am from Bad Reichenhall in Germany. I have completed my M.A. in Political Science at the University of Munich in 2006. In 2003I took part in theErasmus Exchange Programme and spend a year at the Political Science Department at the University Bologna, Italy. Between 2006 and 2008 I was working as an online editor for Condé Nast Publications Germany and in 2009 I completed my M.Sc. in Gender and the Media at the London School of Economics. My thesis is titled ‘Celebrity, Skin and Cyberspace’ and aims to develop through the skin a new heuristic device for re-reading cyberspace. Through the examination of three in depth case studies – each of which interrogates the construction of femininity, queerness and race – this thesis tries to explore how a reading through the skin can provide a more nuanced look on practices of embodiment online.
Email: ashleigh.sawyer@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Deborah Chambers and Dr Carolyn Pedwell
After completing my undergraduate degree in English Literature at Northumbria University in 2007, I then progressed to studying a Masters in Media and Journalism here at Newcastle University which I completed in 2008. Currently, I am working on a PhD which looks at the Representations of ‘Muslim women’ as a discursive category within the British ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ news media. This study will have a three stranded theoretical dimension. It will mainly be situated within a post-structuralist dialogue; post-colonial feminism, Orientalism, theories on representation. The methodological approach taken will be divided into two methods; a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative discursive analysis. This process will be adhered to through the use of a case study approach. In order to compare and contrast where possible the representations of ‘Muslim women’ across these two medias.
Email: bill.roberts@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisor: Dr Chris Haywood
After spending 18 years teaching in the UK, Egypt and Tanzania I moved back to the UK in 2005 and came to Newcastle to undertake a Masters in Education (Counselling and Guidance). Having completed this, I accepted a teaching role here at the university and began my PhD. This is looking at the effect of international schools on the construction of masculinity and considers the roles played by space, friendship, relationships, and sport. It considers a variety of theoretical approaches to the concept of masculinity, including hegemonic masculinity. This is then linked to the concept of 'third culture kids' , a concept commonly used to describe the experiences of students brought up in cultures outside their own. The research was conducted as an in-depth case study on an international school in northern Europe over an eighteen month period.
Email: g.longstaff@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisor: Dr Tony Purvis
Gareth Longstaff’s teaching and research interests are primarily concerned with sexuality and media representations in relation to identity and visual culture. More specifically, he works at the intersection of these areas and examines how identity is connected to other dimensions of media and culture. He is near completion of his doctoral thesis which closely engages with psychoanalysis in the interrogation of the impersonality of desire and the screening of the male subject in contemporary celebrity, online, filmic and photographic form. His most recent project which was an archival commission for The BFI and Channel 4. This focussed on the documentation and analysis of LGBT televisual output during the 1980’s and 90’s in the UK. Recent research papers have considered the significance and Legacy of Channel 4’s 'OUT' and 'Out on Tuesday’ (London, South Bank/BFI/National Film Theatre), ‘Theorising Queer – Psychoanalysis: Pre or Post Queer?’ – Queer in Europe Conference, University of Exeter. He has recently published reviews in Participations: The online Journal of Audience & Reception Studies and The Journal of Media, Culture and Society, as well as the publication of five short-chapter entries in The Encyclopaedia of Gender and Society (SAGE). He also has an upcoming piece in The Journal of Celebrity Studies, Sex and Celebrity (Routledge) due for publication in December 2011.
He was co-organiser of Theorising Queer Visualities at The University of Manchester, and is convener of the Identities and Identifications Post-Graduate Discussion Group, Newcastle University. He is a Member of ‘Queer(y)ing Psychology’ – a critical discussion group engaged with queer theories and methodologies and also a features writer and columnist for several contemporary magazine publications (Gay Times, OUT, iD), he also writes his own monthly queer column in 'The Crack' Magazine (Newcastle).
Email: hazirah.tahamit@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisors: Dr Liviu Popoviciu & Dr Chris Haywood
I am Hazirah Tahamit from Brunei Darussalam. After studying my undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Human Studies at University of Bradford in July 2009, I then proceeded to MA in Mass Communications at Leicester University in September 2009 and have it completed the following year. I am currently reading PhD in Media and Cultural Studies in Newcastle University.
Deeply fascinated by the fashion and identity theories, I have written a thesis on fashion, identity, and taste of the postgraduate students in the University of Leicester for my MA research. The outcome from the research triggers my interest to study fashion and identity of the people from my own country, albeit fashion in Brunei is not as celebrated as it is here in the UK, or in Europe and other Asian countries such as South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan etc.
What I am particularly interested in is the underlying social stigma and the taboo surrounding fashion in Brunei and how it coincides with the identity processes of the Bruneians. My main concentration would be on the traditional dress of the women in Brunei, baju kurung, as there is currently a visible increase in Bruneian women fusing the elements of Western fashion with our traditional costume, which was conventionally laden with Islamic influences.
The main objective of my current research is not to condemn the Bruneian Muslim women, rather, it tries to provide better understanding on the social and cultural aspects of the ever-changing contemporary Brunei. Some socio-political aspects, such as the national identity formation, will also be addressed in the thesis.
Email: jayne.goble@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisor: Dr Chris Haywood
In 2005 I received a First Class Honours degree at Newcastle University. It was also during this time that I became interest in postmodern methodologies and approaches, including how they are framed as a politics of difference in which voices from the margins are pulled into view to challenge apparent western and conventional patterns of social life. In consonance with these approaches, my research focuses on how we understand age; how certain conventional age trajectories are being re-negotiated and what new age trajectories look like. I also consider what this means in terms of gender, ethnicity and class.
In addition, I show that there is a new sense of urgency to intervene in how we talk about age, both theoretically and materially. My work considers various limitations of current postfoundational approaches to age and suggests that more needs to be done to match the needs of certain young women and their shift into adulthood. I therefore work through a methodological tension by interviewing a range of young women.
I have worked as part of a team in a number of research projects such as: developing efficient communication systems in a North-East NHS hospital; and, discovering how to re-establish volunteering schemes in order to meet the needs of young people and to improve participation. I am currently working for the National Audit Office where we report to parliament on the value for money achieved by government policy initiatives and programmes
Email: lina.khoulani@ncl.ac.uk
Supervisor: Dr John Richardson
After I studied English language and literature for my undergraduate degree at Damascus University, I completed my M.A. in Applied Linguistics and TESOL in Newcastle University. My research in the M.A. explored language change in the Damascene variety of Vernacular Arabic. My current PhD research focuses on the discourse of different news corporations when covering current affairs in the Middle East. The work will utilize Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the linguistic features of this discourse; in addition to the discursive and social practices involved in producing news by these news corporations. Two methodological approaches will be followed for the purpose of examining these textual and contextual characteristics: quantitative approach including statistical and content analysis, and qualitative approach.
Moreover, the research will aim to investigate the influence of the different political agendas on the processes of producing news discourse.
Email: robert.cassar@newcastle.ac.uk
Supervisors: Prof Deborah Chambers and Dr Liviu Popoviciu
My academic areas of interest include: Popular culture, Western countries’ cultural and political ideologies, gaming cultures, creative management practices and e-commerce. In the field of communication studies I am also very much interested in Film theory and Japanese Animation.
I first read for a bachelor's degree in Italian Literature and Pedagogy with the University of Malta. Subsequently I read for an M.B.A with the Maastricht School of Management (Netherlands) specialising in General and Strategic Management. My MBA thesis assessed the introduction and implementation of e-commerce practices within the Maltese SME sector.
I am currently in the process of reading for my PhD; my primary area of research being Gaming Cultures. In my study, I will be examining the narrative component of a number of videogames such as Bioshock (2K games). The main objective of this PhD will be to provide a better understanding of the cultural, social and political dimension found in the narratives presented by those games. This work will examine whether there are cultural hegemonies, gender issues, political agendas or socio-economic ideologies hidden within those games.
Furthermore, this study will also analyse selected texts and material surrounding this medium such as game related articles and fan-made game guides and reviews (available online).