Coordinating committee

Profiles of the members of the Coordinating Committee, MeCCSA Women's Media Studies Network.
Heather Nunn

 WMSN Chair and MeCCSA Vice-Chair

Heather NunnHeather Nunn is Professor of Culture and Politics and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures at the School of Arts, Roehampton University, London. Her research interests include politics and the media, documentary and reality programming, cultural politics, class and gender. She has published in journals such as Screen, New Formations, the Journal for Cultural Research and Women: A Cultural Review and is the author of Thatcher, Politics and Fantasy (2002), co-author of Reality TV: Realism and Revelation (2005) and co-editor of the The Tabloid Culture Reader (2007).  She is currently writing a book with Anita Biressi called Class in Contemporary British Culture.

Heather has been a member of the Women’s Media Studies Network since its launch and she has been chair of the Network since January 2003. She is Vice-Chair of the MeCCSA Executive Committee  and Co-ordinator of the Activities sub-committee.

h.nunn@roehampton.ac.uk

Anita Biressi
WMSN Communications

Anita BiressiAnita Biressi is Reader in Media Cultures in the School of Arts, Roehampton University, London. Her research into media spectacle, documentary and factual film and TV and tabloid culture has appeared in journals and collections including Space and Culture, Screen, the Journal for Cultural Research and most recently Celebrity Studies. She is the author of Crime, Fear and the Law in True Crime Stories (2001) and co-author of Reality TV (2005). She also co-edited the Mediactive edition entitled ‘Media War’ (2004) and The Tabloid Culture Reader (2007). Her book Class in Contemporary British Culture, written with Heather Nunn, is forthcoming from Palgrave. 

Anita has been a member of the Women’s Media Studies Network since its inception. She became a member of the organising group in 2002, and she currently  oversees publicity and communications for the Network. Anita is also an elected member of the MeCCSA Executive , where she currently serves on the Events and Activities sub-committee.

a.biressi@roehampton.ac.uk

Rosalind Brunt

Rosalind Brunt is a Visiting Research Fellow in Media Studies and Associate Lecturer at Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University.

She has a long involvement in the institutional representation of media studies: she was the first vice -chair of MeCCSA and the chair of the Women's Media Studies Network. She has also served on the QAA Quality Assurance Benchmarking Committee for the media, communication and cultural studies.

Her research interests include: the development of media studies in higher education; media representation of Muslims and news coverage of the Iraq occupation; and sexuality and popular culture.

Kaitlynn Mendes
Kaitlynn Mendes Kaitlynn Mendes is a Lecturer in Media Studies at DeMontfort University. She currently teaches courses on gender and media, new communication technology, and mass media. She is a former Chair of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, which she held for two years, and is currently the co-editor of Feminist Media Study’s Commentary and Criticism section.

Kaitlynn’s main research interests involve representations of women in the mainstream press, historic reporting of women’s health issues, and children, news and citizenship. She has published articles in Feminist Media Studies, the International Encyclopedia of Communication, Sociology Compass, and the Routledge Companion to News and Journalism Studies. This is her first year serving on the MeCCSA Women's Media Studies Network Coordinating Committee.

kmendes@dmu.ac.uk

Margaret Montgomerie

Margaret MontgomerieMargaret Montgomerie is Programme Leader in Joint Media Studies at De Montfort University. She teaches in the areas of Media Texts and Media Gender and Identity. Her research is mainly concerned with shifts in the representations of marginalised identities in popular screen fictions. Her current research is focussed on media representations of impairment and disability, working with Santesih at the University of Montpellier and The Outside Centre, Wolverhampton.

Margaret served as a committee member and conference organiser for AMFIT, one of the organisations which formed MeCCSA and she was also a Board Member of Console-ing Passions the USA-based Feminist Screen Research Conference organisation. She was a founder member of the MeCCSA Women’s Media Studies Network and organised and hosted the inaugural meeting at the University of Derby in 2001. She is currently a coordinating committee member of the Network.

Karen Ross
Karen Ross Karen Ross is MeCCSA's Treasurer. She is a Professor of Media and Public Communication and Associate Dean (Academic) in the Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool . She teaches political communication and gender/media, and was Visiting Professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Massey University (2007, 2009) and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics at Queens University Belfast (2001-2004).

She has written extensively on the relationship between women, politics and media, gender and media, and the media and the public. She has authored/co-authored seven books and edited a further 8 collections as well as numerous journal articles and conference papers. She is the foundational editor of a new Blackwell journal, Communication, Culture and Critique which launched in March 2008 and sits on the editorial board of a further six journals. 

Karen’s broad research interests include the gender/media/politics nexus, new directions in audience research; relations between the media and the public; and gender and media. She has also developed several film-based training materials focused on the equality and diversity agenda in higher education. She is currently editing a Handbook on Gender, Sexualities and Media for Blackwell.  Karen's new book, Gendered Media: Women, Men and Identity Politics has just been published by Blackwell (2009).

rossk@liv.ac.uk
Milly Williamson

Milly Williamson is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Brunel University. She has conducted research into television and film fan cultures, horror and gender. She is the author of The Lure of the Vampire: gender, fiction and fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy (2005), and related journal articles and chapters in edited collections. She is currently working on a monograph on Celebrity Culture, as well as continuing to publish in the area of television studies. She is also co-authoring work on press representations of Muslims in Britain. Milly has been a member of the Women’s Media Studies Network since its launch and has hosted Network events.

milly.williamson@brunel.ac.uk

Coordinating committee

  • Heather Nunn
    Roehampton University
    (WMSN Chair,
    MeCCSA Executive)
  • Anita Biressi
    Roehampton University
    (WMSN Communications,
    MeCCSA Executive)
  • Rosalind Brunt
    Sheffield Hallam University
  • Kaitlynn Mendes
    University of Nottingham
  • Margaret Montgomerie
    De Montfort University
  • Karen Ross
    Liverpool University
  • Milly Williamson
    Brunel University