Visiting Scholars

Dr Sherry Ying Xiao Shaw is an Associate Professor of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Florida, with cross-appointments across the university’s film and media studies, Asian American studies, and gender studies centers. A scholar of Chinese-language cinema, transnational popular culture, and sound studies, she is the author of China in the Mix (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and an active film producer, curator, and public humanities practitioner who has organized high-profile film festivals and symposia globally.

 Dr Jian Xu

Dr Jian Xu is an Associate Professor of Communication at Deakin University, Associate Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, and co-leader of the university’s Asian Media, Culture and Society Research Group. A leading scholar of Chinese digital media and celebrity studies, he is Editor-in-Chief of Communication Research and Practice (AANZCA) and series editor for key academic imprints including Bloomsbury and Cambridge University Press, and has received multiple national teaching and research awards.

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.

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). 

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 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. 

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. 

Dr Kata Szita

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.