Dr Jessica Balanzategui

Biography

Jessica Balanzategui is a Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies in the Department of Media and Communication and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies. She is the Founding Editor of Amsterdam University Press's book series, Horror and Gothic Media Cultures. Jessica's research examines entertainment cultures and aesthetics, with a particular focus on screen genres for and about children - particularly those that trouble expectations and definitions of "child appropriateness" - and horror and the Gothic. As part of these areas of speciality, her widely published research illuminates how genre, storytelling, and aesthetics operate in digital cultures (such as YouTube, subscription video on demand services, and online scary storytelling cultures), and in tandem, the impacts of technological, industrial, and cultural change on screen genres and their audiences, including child audiences.

Her book, The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) is available in full online via OAPEN after being selected via the "Knowledge Unlatched Select" open-access publishing scheme: 
 
http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25965 

Jessica's work has been published in a wide range of leading international journals including New Media and Society, Convergence, The Journal of Visual Culture, Television and New Media, The Velvet Light Trap, and NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies.

Jessica was awarded the 2020 Australian Film Institute Research Fellowship to examine how Australian children's television genres have changed in accordance with industrial, technological, and policy developments. She is also Chief Investigator on the large-scale industry-funded project, Australian Children's Television Cultures, funded by the Australian Children's Television Foundation. The four year project aims to better understand the multi-faceted cultural impact of Australian children's TV in the era of streaming video services and significant policy change. Jessica previously led other grant-supported interdisciplinary research projects including: one on the futures of cinema exhibition, with a particular focus on the rise of the immersive experience and entertainment destination, and another which examined how digital technologies are reshaping how children play, combining perspectives from media and children's development studies.

Jessica welcomes applications from prospective PhD students in cinema and screen, digital cultures, and childhood studies.