Dr Sarah Hill

Early Career Academic Fellow

Background

I joined Media, Culture, Heritage in 2017 as an Early Career Academic Fellow. My research interests are broadly situated within feminist media studies, particularly girlhood. I am currently researching disabled girls' online self-representation practices, looking at how disabled girls and young women present themselves online and the ways in which discourses of gender and disability intersect within these practices.

I completed my PhD in 2016, which explored how postfeminist discourses of girlhood were mediated within contemporary British girl-centred films. I am currently writing my monograph based on this research, titled Young Women and Contemporary Cinema: Gender and Postfeminism in British Film, for I.B. Tauris. 

Prior to joining Newcastle University, I worked at the University of East Anglia as an AHRC Cultural Engagement Fellow and Senior Research Associate on the Women Amateur Filmmakers in Britain project with the East Anglian Film Archive. My role involved bringing previously unseen work by women amateur filmmakers to audiences by creating a cinema exhibition programme for the newly digitised film collection, which spans the 1920s-1980s. This work aimed to bring previously hidden work by women amateur filmmakers to light and encourage a feminist approach to film archiving and exhibition. 

I am keen to supervise students with interests in feminist media studies, girlhood studies, and British cinema.

Qualifications:

PhD Film and Media Studies, University of East Anglia (2012-2016)

MA (Distinction) Screening Europe, Swansea University (2009-2010)

BA Hons (First Class) Media Studies, Swansea University (2006-2009)



Research

I am currently researching disabled girls' online self-representation practices, looking at how disabled girls and young women present themselves online and the ways in which discourses of gender and disability intersect within these practices using a combination of textual analysis and ethnographic methods.

My PhD research explored how postfeminist discourses of girlhood were mediated within contemporary British girl-centred films using a combination of textual analysis and critical reception study in order to discern how these films were both informed by and contributed to discourses that circulate around girlhood in the twenty first century. I am currently writing my monograph based on this research, titled Young Women and Contemporary Cinema: Gender and Postfeminism in British Film, for I.B. Tauris. 

Teaching
Prior to joining Newcastle University, I previously taught at the University of East Anglia and Oxford Brookes University. I have taught a broad range of modules in areas such as film studies, media studies, and cultural studies at BA and MA level.
Publications