I have been Professor of French Studies at Newcastle since 2010.

I was Director of the Research Centre for Film & Digital Media from its establishment in 2011 until 2016.

Before coming to Newcastle, I worked in the French Department at the University of Sheffield.

My PhD is from Leeds and my degree from Oxford. 

My hobbies are painting, jogging, and listening to music from the 1970s.

My main research areas are Algerian cinema, and French cinema since the 1960s (especially fantasy genres).

I am Principal Investigator on a major AHRC project called Screening Violence: a Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries, which begins in April 2018 and runs for three and a half years. We will use film reception as a means to elicit articulations around conflict and transition to peace in communities with recent experience of civil conflict, namely: Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia and Northern Ireland.

The other investigators on the project are Dr Nick Morgan and Dr Philippa Page (Newcastle, SML), Dr Simon Philpott (Newcastle, GPS), Dr Roddy Brett (St Andrews) and Professor Brandon Hamber (Ulster). We will also be working with partner academics and filmmakers in each of the five countries.

• Austin G. The Stink of the Sacred: a Bataillean reading of Gainsbourg's film Je t'aime moi non plus. French Cultural Studies 2019, 30(1), 34-43.
• Yu SQ, Austin G, ed. Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
• Austin G. Trauma in Recent Algerian Documentary Cinema: Stories of Civil Conflict Told by the Living Dead. In: Hodgin N; Thakkar A, ed. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp.31-52.
• Austin G, ed. New Uses of Bourdieu in Film and Media Studies. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016.
• Austin G. Contemporary French Horror Cinema: From Absence to Embodied Presence. In: Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, ed. A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema. Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015, pp.275-288.
• Austin G. Mohamed Chouikh: from anti-colonial commemoration to a cinema of contestation. In: Gugler, J, ed. Ten Arab Filmmakers. Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press, 2015, pp.166-187. Submitted.
• Austin G. Political depression and working practices in recent French cinema. Studies in French Cinema 2015, 15(2), 156-167.
• Austin G. Decrypting depression in Rivette's Histoire de Marie et Julien. Screen 2014, 55(1), 73-83.
• Austin G, Martin F. Introduction: French and Francophone cinema and contestation. Studies in French Cinema 2013, 13(3), 193-196.
• Austin G. Algerian National Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
• Austin G. Biological Dystopias: The Body in Contemporary French Horror Cinema. L'Esprit Createur 2012, 52(2), 99-113.
• Austin G. Spaces of the Dispossessed in Algerian Cinema. Modern & Contemporary France 2011, 19(2), 195-208.
• Austin G. Against amnesia: representations of memory in Algerian cinema. Journal of African Cinemas 2010, 2(1), 27-35.
• Austin G. "Seeing and listening from the site of trauma": The Algerian War in Contemporary French Cinema. In: Austin, J, ed. New Spaces for French and Francophone Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, pp.115-125.
• Austin G. Contemporary French Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
• Austin G. Drawing trauma: visual testimony in Caché and J'ai 8 ans. Screen 2007, 48(4), 529-536.
• Austin G. Stars in Modern French Film. London; New York: Arnold; Oxford University Press, 2003.