Screen and Cultural Studies

Our program examines the history and practice of contemporary culture and screen media. Our research looks at the production, aesthetics, circulation, consumption and uses of contemporary and historical screen media and cultures, global and local studies of sexuality, race, cities, migration, youth and cultural industries, and the environmental and social impacts and uses of cultural practice.

Screen and Cultural Studies

Screen and Cultural Studies at Melbourne

The Screen and Cultural Studies program focuses on cultural texts, sites and practices to explore cultures and screen media, analysing their evolution, politics, social function and embedding in everyday life.

Academic staff in the Screen and Cultural Studies program are published writers, industry professionals, and leading researchers in the following areas:

  • Asian media (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South East Asia)
  • Migration and media globalisation
  • Critical fashion studies
  • Critical television studies
  • Digital media and new media arts
  • Lifestyle and commodity cultures
  • Feminist, queer, gender and intersectional theory
  • Affect, trauma and psychoanalysis
  • Youth, new media, and political subjectivity
  • Colonialism, postcolonialism and the decolonial
  • Film and media industries and cultural policy
  • Film and media histories (Hollywood, Art, European, Australian)
  • Ecocritical media and cultural studies
  • Cultures of crisis

The program has strong connections to the Research Unit in Public Cultures, Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network, Centre for Enlightenment, Romanticism and Contemporary Culture, Critical Fashion Studies research collective and the Melbourne Screen Studies Group.

View our staff

Professor Sean Cubitt
Professor Sean Cubitt
In the 21st century, we inherit the challenges of patriarchy and colonialism, and add new challenges of climate change and contagious illnesses. Culture has never been stable or static. In our times, it changes faster and with deeper consequences, from consumerism to new populist governments, communal violence and an epidemic of mental illness. By paying close attention to the movements of culture, from interpersonal relations to the political economy of supply chains, and the increasingly swift and interactive screen media that increasingly represent and reconfigure these trends in real time, Screen and Cultural Studies connects the intimate and the global so that we can understand and intervene in the upheavals of our times.

Professor Sean Cubitt, Head of Screen and Cultural Studies

Featured research and engagement projects

The Screen and Cultural Studies program has a successful record of receiving external and university funding for research projects, including from the Australian Research Council (ARC).

More featured research

Learn about our research centres and units

Study with us

Screen and Cultural Studies graduates pursue careers in industries that include the not for profit sector, curatorship, cultural policy/cultural industries, media, government, education and academia.

Undergraduate

Graduate coursework

Graduate research

Meet our Screen and Cultural Studies staff

The Screen and Cultural Studies program is recognised nationally and internationally for innovative teaching, scholarship and research. Our staff are prominent researchers in their areas of expertise across our unique program.

Screen and Cultural Studies honorary staff