Names of Supervisors and affiliated institutions:
Dr Alyssa Grossman (Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool)
Professor Michelle Henning (Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool)
Email address:
Research topic:
My practice-led research project investigates transcultural remembrances of the Covid-19 pandemic through moving images in China, examining how pandemic memories are articulated and conveyed in a transcultural context. Moving image artefacts participate in various ways in the transcultural communication of pandemic memories. For example, they constitute an archive of personal and collective memories, perform acts of remembrance and commemoration, and structure various modes of resistance to national and hegemonic discourses of forgetting. These three dimensions form the core of my project.
This research will analyse a selection of Chinese moving images produced by state-controlled organisations and ordinary individuals between 2020 and 2022, focusing on documentaries and social media videos that contribute to the construction of collective and transcultural memories of the pandemic. It will explore how through different memory policies, unofficial memories interact and compete with official or state-led memories and cross national borders through various forms of screen media. Such cases will also be analysed using transcultural approaches, including travelling memory and multidirectional memory.
The written and practical parts of this research will be developed in tandem through ongoing dialogue and analysis. Alongside a 40,000-word written dissertation, my research will produce a 45-60 minute essay film that demonstrates the interplay of individual, collective, and transcultural memories of the pandemic. I will work with interviews, moving image archives, such as news footage and social media videos, as well as my personal memories to remediate the memories of the incident. The dissertation will also reflect on the film's impacts and the debates it provokes after it has been screened. This film will not only be a piece of research, an accessible mass media product, but also a memory artefact that will promote dialogue and debate in the field.
Research areas:
Collective memory; media memory; Covid-19; moving image; filmmaking; practice-based research
Academic achievements:
Conferences:
- Diverse Voices - MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference 2023 (online, July 2023)
- Framing and Re-Framing ‘Pandemic Documentary’ (Nottingham, UK, June 2023)
- Film and Television: Memory, Nostalgia and Identity - 6th Annual B-Film PGR Symposium (Birmingham, UK, June 2023)
- Trauma and Nightmare – 5th International Interdisciplinary Conference (online, March 2023)
Teaching experience:
2021-present: English academic writing – Personal tutor (online)
2018-2021: Screenwriting and filmmaking – Personal tutor (Beijing)