Visiting Scholars

Call for Visiting Scholars

The School of International Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) invites applications for our Visiting Scholars programme.

There are two Visiting Scholar positions, for which UNNC covers transportation, accommodation, and a research stipend.

The Visiting Scholar residency is 2-3 months in duration (exact date range chosen by the Scholar), and can be held during Semester 1 (October – December 2025), or Semester 2 (March - June 2026).

The current round of application is open until 15 December 2024 and the outcome of application shall be announced by mid- January 2024 for commencement in Autumn semester 2025 and Spring 2026.

Visiting Scholars who are currently employed by another institution will need a consent letter from their current employer if they will be based at UNNC for more than a week or will visit multiple times.

The aim of this award is to foster research collaboration with members of staff in the School of International Communications (IC). During the residency, the scholar will undertake their research and collaborate with one or more members of IC staff on a research project (proposed by the Visiting Scholar) that will result in a publication and/or a grant application.

Visiting scholars will also deliver one lecture for our School’s UG and PG students and will give one presentation to the wider University on their research as part of our Invited Speakers program. There are no further teaching or administrative responsibilities.

The award is competitive, and will be based on the proposed research proposal and the applicant’s CV. Applicants should have already been awarded their PhD degrees and have expertise relevant to IC, which includes but is not limited to media and communication studies, journalism, cultural studies, film and television studies, game studies, and digital media.

Application Instructions

To apply, first contact a member of staff to discuss your research proposal. Then, please send the following in an email addressed to IC Research at: ICResearch@Nottingham.edu.cn

Covering letter - please state the semester (1 or 2), the proposed length of residency (maximum 3 months), and suggested dates;
Research proposal detailing your proposed research project, intended output(s), and the member(s) of staff that you have contacted [maximum of 500 words];
A statement of support from the IC member(s) of staff;
CV;
Email addresses of two referees.

The call closes on Friday, 15 December 2024 at midnight (Beijing Standard Time). The Visiting Scholar committee will aim to make their decisions by mid-January 2024.

For further information about the research interests of members of staff, please consult the staff webpages or contact members directly. You can find the full list of School staff and their research areas here.

The Visiting Scholar website can be found here.

For further questions about the programme, please contact Dr Sadia Jamil at SADIA.JAMIL@nottingham.edu.cn

About the University

The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) was the first Sino-foreign University to open its doors in China. This award-winning campus offering a UK style education has grown to establish a student body of 8,000 in just 15 years.

The School of International Communications is the largest school in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and is affiliated to the Department of Culture, Media and Visual Studies at the Nottingham campus. More information about the School of International Communications and its members can be found here.

Year

2023/24 | 2022/23 | 2021/22 | 2020/21
2023/24
Name	Biography
Dr Gaby David	Dr Gaby David, a Uruguayan/French researcher and university lecturer, holds a PhD in visual sociology from EHESS Paris, along with a Master’s degree in teaching English and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Paris 8. Her interdisciplinary approach, bridging visual culture, sociology of culture, and mobile culture, focuses on analyzing the construction of meanings through vernacular uses and practices of the mobile online image. Actively engaged in research, Dr David is a member of the "Mobile Creation" group at Sorbonne Nouvelle's IRCAV and affiliated with TransCrit at the University of Paris 8, contributing significantly to the field. Beyond academia, Dr David serves on the executive board of the International Association of Visual Sociology, recognised for her outstanding thesis by the association in 2016. With over two decades of teaching experience, her participatory and interdisciplinary courses explore themes intrinsic to visual culture and everyday life, enriching the academic landscape in various departments and universities in Paris. Through her extensive international experience and prolific publication record, Dr Gaby David continues to shape discourse and inspire students in the realms of visual sociology and cultural studies.
Dr Linnie Blake	Dr Linnie Blake is a distinguished scholar renowned for her expertise in Gothic studies and commitment to public engagement. With a BA (Hons) First Class from the University of Warwick, an MPhil from the University of Oxford, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, Dr Blake possesses extensive academic qualifications. As the Founding Head of The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, she led initiatives to promote Gothic scholarship nationally and internationally, including organising the annual Gothic Manchester Festival and overseeing the publication of Dark Arts journal. Additionally, her role as a Public Engagement Fellow at MMU underscores her dedication to fostering community engagement through innovative projects like Moss Side Stories. In academia, Dr Blake's leadership extended to her tenure as Programme Leader for English, where she managed the BA English programme and ensured high standards of academic quality and student support. Her influence also extends beyond her institution, as she serves as an expert reviewer for external funding bodies and holds esteemed editorial positions in journals like Horror Studies and Gothic Studies. Through her scholarship and leadership, Dr Linnie Blake continues to shape the discourse in Gothic studies while making significant contributions to academia and public engagement initiatives.
2022/23
Name	Biography
Dr Antal Wozniak	Dr Antal Wozniak is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Programme Director of the MA Media and Politics. His research focuses on political and environmental communication with a particular emphasis on media representations of climate change and climate politics. He holds a PhD in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Mannheim, Germany, where he also worked as a Research Associate in a project on transnational mediated communication about climate change. During his time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, through collaborating with Dr Zixiu Liu, he will be conducting research on media coverage of the war in Ukraine in countries with particularly close economic and/or military-strategic ties to Russia (Brazil, India, and South Africa).
Professor Kenneth C.C. Yang	Kenneth C.C. Yang (Ph.D.) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Texas at El Paso, USA. His research focuses on new media advertising, consumer behavior, and international advertising, and has been published in Cyberpsychology, Journal of Strategic Communication, International Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Intercultural Communication Studies, Journal of Marketing Communication, and Telematics and Informatics. During his appointment, he will work with Dr. Filippo Gilardi on a project titled “Using live streaming platforms and influencers to engage ethnic majority communities with cultural heritage contents of ethnic minority and indigenous communities: A comparative study of China and U.S.”
Dr T.J. Thomson	Dr T.J. Thomson is a senior lecturer in visual communication and media at QUT. He is the author of "To See and Be Seen: The Environments, Interactions, and Identities Behind News Images" (winner of the NCA 2020 Diane S. Hope Book of the Year Award) and is the 2019 Anne Dunn Scholar of the Year. T.J.’s research focuses on how visual journalism is produced—by whom, in what environments, through which processes, and with what results. He also examines visual self-representation on social media and everyday image-making. During his time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, T.J. will collaborate with A/Prof Shixin Ivy Zhang on a project, “A Four-Way Examination of Local Visual News in China.” The project aims to measure the volume and quality of visual content on a Chinese regional news platform.
2021/22
Name	Biography
Qi Ai	Qi AI is a postdoctoral fellow in media and communication studies at the School of Journalism and Communication, Shandong University, China, where he is the associate director of Research Center for Culture, Art and Communication of Film and Teleplay. He is also a member of Shandong Film Association. He holds a Ph.D. in film and television studies from the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests primarily include genre studies, film comedy and stardom studies, film industries and regulation, and film diplomacy and festivals. During his time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, through collaborating with Dr. Corey Schultz, he will be conducting research on the mutual construction between Wang Baoqiang’s celebrity and New Year film franchises. This project will explore how starring the New Year films made in the given context reshapes Wang Baoqiang’s screen identity, and how the variation changes his celebrity status in the 2010s.
Andrew Wortham	Andrew Wortham received his PhD in Applied Anthropology at Columbia University in the spring of 2021. His research is on gay men's organizations in Yunnan, China and how they use HIV funding to both improve public health and build LGBT communities. He is currently teaching writing, communications and world civilizations courses at Kunming University of Science and Technology. During the spring of 2022 semester, Andrew has been working with Bjarke Liboriussen on a paper about the use of online dating apps for gay men in rural China. They are using Prof. Liboriussen's expertise in online gaming to apply theories of play to the way that gay men approach online interactions.
2020/21
Name	Biography
Dr Kata Szita	Dr. Kata Szita’s research interests involve the behavioral and cognitive aspects of film, media, and extended reality experiences. She completed her PhD in 2019 in cognitive film studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her recently published doctoral thesis, Smartphone cinematics: A cognitive study of smartphone spectatorship, discusses the psychological and technological mechanisms of interactive viewing on mobile devices. Currently, she investigates moving-image, virtual reality, and augmented reality experiences with a particular focus on cognition, embodiment, physiological reactions, decision-making, and social behavior. During her time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, she conducts a study on movie-viewing experiences in social virtual reality environments in collaboration with Prof. Eugene Ch’ng and Dr. Wyatt Moss-Wellington. In this study, viewers’ emotional engagement and comprehension are compared between virtual reality and physical-world viewing of narrative films.
Professor Cecília Mello	Cecília Mello is Professor of Film and Audiovisual Media at the Department of Film, Radio and Television, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research interests involve audiovisual realism, cinema and urban spaces, intermediality and world cinemas – with an emphasis on British and Chinese cinemas. She has published widely in Brazil and abroad. During her time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, she will be conducting research on current realist trends in East/Southeast Asian and Latin American cinemas, in collaboration with Dr Corey Schultz. In this study, they will explore the hypothesis that the realist turn in world cinema, noticeable from the 1990s onwards and coinciding with the introduction of digital technology, assumes a peculiar form in these cinemas in that it incorporates elements of the fantastic, the magical and the phantasmatic, complicating the relationship between the moving image and the objective real.
Dr Tingting Hu	Tingting Hu is an Associate Professor Research Fellow in the School of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University. She has received her PhD at Macquarie University in 2019 and taught at the University of Technology Sydney and University of New South Wales from 2016 to 2019. Her research interest lies in the articulation of film, media and cultural studies with feminist theories, transmedia studies in various social and cultural contexts. During her time as a Visiting Scholar at UNNC, she conducts a study on fan engagement of transmedia boys’ love adapted web-dramas in collaboration with Dr Celia Lam. This project adopts a transmedia perspective to investigate how fans engage with the transmedia extensions of BL adapted web-dramas across multiple media platforms and how they empower the producer-initiated and fan-strengthened counterculture violating the hegemonic mainstream culture and heteronormativity.