(MENAFN- The Conversation) Lecturer in Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex Profile Articles Activity

Sarah Louise Smyth is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Essex. Before coming to Essex in September 2019, Sarah taught at the Universities of Southampton, Winchester and Bournemouth.

Sarah's research focuses on women's representation and authorship in contemporary film and television. She is interested in feminist theory, especially feminist film theory; women's filmmaking and television production; postfeminism; pregnancy and motherhood; genre filmmaking.

In 2025, Sarah was selected as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. This scheme selects a handful of the UK's most outstanding early career researchers in the arts and humanities and helps them bring their research ideas to a broader audience on BBC radio. Selected from hundreds of applicants, these researchers represent some of the brightest emerging minds in their fields. As part of the New Generation Thinkers scheme, Sarah will be a researcher-in-residence at Radio 4's arts and culture programme, Front Row.

Sarah's current book project examines the films of director, writer and journalist, Nora Ephron. Despite being one of the most successful women filmmakers in Hollywood of all time, Ephron's films have received little academic attention. This monograph will examine Ephron's contributions to women's filmmaking and Hollywood cinema, both in terms of her well-known and lesser-known films. The book, ReFocus: The Films of Nora Ephron, is currently contracted to Edinburgh University Press' series, ReFocus: The American Directors, and is due for publication in late 2026. As part of this project, Sarah has published the chapter "Nora, Julie, Julia: Legacies of Older Women in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia (2009)," in Women, Ageing and the Screen Industries Falling off a Cliff (2023), published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Experience

• –present Lecturer in Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

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