Biography
I am the Academic Advisor for the Columbia University-TCD Dual Degree in Film and former Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning for the School of Creative Arts (2020-2022). I'm currently the PI on the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project (2022-2026) 'From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality.'
Prior to joining Trinity as an Assistant Professor in Film Studies in 2018, I lectured for two years at the University of St. Andrews (2016-2018), as well as Maynooth University (2015-2016) and the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, NUIG (2015). My teaching and research are primarily concerned with the intersections between film and digital media, as well as between critical theory and creative practice: these include audiovisual essays and the use of digital tools for experiments with screen aesthetics. My other main research and teaching interests relate to film dialogue, voices, sound and music; performance and stardom; gender; and American independent cinema.
My research on sound and dialogue includes the monographs Women's Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes (University of Texas Press, 2022) and Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema (Edinburgh University Press 2018), as well as articles on the relationship between characterization and diegetic music and point-of-audition sound. In 2020 I co-edited a dossier on 'Revoicing the Screen' for Cinema Journal/JCMS, while in 2017 I guest edited a special issue of The Soundtrack on emerging audio-visual media. With regard to digital media, I have also published on political memes, digital fan art, podcasts, and ASMR videos. My work on performance and stardom has focused on issues of gender, reflexivity and subculture, leading to individual studies of Christina Ricci, Tilda Swinton, Parker Posey, and Cate Blanchett.
I am currently a postdoctoral supervisor on HUMAN+, an international and interdisciplinary fellowship programme supporting interdisciplinary research between Computer Science and Arts & Humanities, supported by the European Commission, Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Co-Fund Action.
I am also a regular contributor to media and arts shows on RTÉ Lyric FM and RTÉ 2fm, as well as contributing arts criticism to newspapers like The Irish Times and Irish Independent and online platforms like VOX.
I teach a wide range of Film modules across the department's undergraduate and MPhil programmes. More broadly at Trinity, I supervise research on the M.Sc. in Interactive Digital Media (School of Computer Science) and contribute to the School of Creative Arts elective 'The Art of the Megacity', and the Faculty-wide Columbia Dual Degree course 'Ideas and Perceptions of Europe'.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
The melodramatic mode in mother-daughter focused VR experiences in, editor(s)Maud Ceuterick and Kata Szita , From Cinema to Virtual Reality and Back: Aesthetics, Technologies, and Spectatorship, Amsterdam University Press, 2024, [Jennifer O'Meara]
Mental Images and Emotive Voices in True Crime Podcasts focused on Female Victims in, editor(s)Karen Boyle and Susan Berridge , Routledge Companion to Gender, Media & Violence, UK, Routledge, 2023, pp10pp. , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara and Cáit Murphy, Aberrant AI creations: co-creating surrealist body horror using the DALL-E Mini text-to-image generator, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 29, (4), 2023, p1070 - 1096
Jennifer O'Meara and Kata Szita, AR cinema: Visual storytelling and embodied experiences with augmented reality filters and backgrounds, PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality, MIT Press, 2023
Tilda Swinton: From Avant-Garde Androgyne to The Avengers in, editor(s)Steven Rybin , Stellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010s, Rutgers University Press, 2022, pp108-124 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, Women's Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes, Austin, Texas, University of Texas Press, 2022, 320pp
Jennifer O'Meara, Digital Color Technologies: Color grading, restoration, archives and criticism, Teaching Media Quarterly, 9, (1), 2021, p1 - 16
Manipulating (Public) Images in the Contemporary Music Documentary in, editor(s)Antonio Cascelli and Denis Condon , Threshold, Intermediality and Synchresis in Music and Visual Culture, Routledge, 2021, pp79 - 90, [Jennifer O'Meara]
Identity Politics and Vocal 'Whitewashing' in Celebrity Lip Syncs in, editor(s)Jaimie Baron, Jennifer Fleeger and Shannon Wong Lerner , Media Ventriloquism: How Audiovisual Technologies Transform the Voice-Body Relationship, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2021, pp117 - 132, [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, Body Talk and the Remediation of Women's Voices in RuPaul's Drag Race, Cinema Journal/JCMS, 61, (1), 2021, p75 - 98
Cinema Journal/JCMS, "In Focus" dossier "Revoicing the Screen", 59, 4, (2020), 151-187p, Tessa Dwyer and Jennifer O'Meara, [eds.]
Film Matters, 11, 1, (2020), 139-176p, Jennifer O'Meara and Hiram Harrington, [eds. dossier on Digital Media ], 2020
Tessa Dwyer and Jennifer O'Meara, 'Introduction' to 'In Focus: Revoicing the Screen', Cinema Journal/JCMS, 59, (4), 2020, p151-153
Jennifer O'Meara, Remixing Actresses' Voices on the You Must Remember This podcast, "In Focus" dossier on "Revoicing the Screen", Cinema Journal/JCMS, 59, (4), 2020, p159-164
Jennifer O'Meara, Merrie Snell, Lipsynching (Study of Sound Series), Review of Lipsynching, by Merrie Snell , Screen, Oxford University Press, 61, (4), 2020, p668-670
Activism through celebration: the role of the Dublin Feminist Film Festival in supporting women and Irish film in, editor(s)Susan Liddy , Women in the Irish Film Industry: Stories and Storytellers, Cork, Cork University Press, 2019, pp153-168 , [Karla Healion, Aileen O'Driscoll, Jennifer O'Meara, Katie Stone]
Jennifer O'Meara, Touchscreens, tactility and material traces: from avant-garde artists to Instagram ASMRtists, NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies (Amsterdam University Press), Autumn 2019, 2019, p235-262
Anna Biller in, editor(s)Jamie Sexton and Ernest Mathijs , The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema, Routledge, 2019, pp411-421 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, Identifying Cult Stardom: A Check-list For The Digital Era, Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, Fall 2019, 2019
Jennifer O'Meara, Call her Moonchild: Christina Ricci's enduring embodiment of impure youth and whiteness, Celebrity Studies, 10, (2), 2019, p208 - 227
Jennifer O'Meara, Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 232pp
HBO's Hall of Mirrors: The Comeback as Meta-Commentary on Television and Celebrity Culture in, editor(s)Victoria McCollum and Giuliana Monteverde , HBO's Original Voices: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power, Routledge, 2018, pp127-140 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, Candy Wrapper Couture in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Peephole Journal, (10), 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Meme girls versus Trump: digitally recycled screen dialogue as political discourse, The Velvet Light Trap, (82), 2018, p28-42
Neurotic and Going Nowhere: Comedy and the Contemporary Jewish American Male in, editor(s)Silvia Dibeltulo and Ciara Barrett , Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp49-61 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Film Matters, 8, 3, (2018), 60-83p, Jennifer O'Meara & Adrienne Pohl, [eds.], Dossier on Race, gender and genre in 21st century cinema
The Soundtrack, 9, 1+2, (2017), 3-108p, Jennifer O'Meara, [eds.], Special issue on Sound and Music in Emerging Audiovisual Media
Jennifer O'Meara, The Actor-Writer as Author in the Before Sunrise Trilogy, Mediascape, (Fall 2017), 2017, p1-5
Jennifer O'Meara, Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music: Performance, Authority, Authenticity (2016), by eds. Warwick and Adrian , Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 20, (2), 2017, p199-202
Parker Posey as Hal Hartley's ''Captive Actress'' in, editor(s)Steven Rybin , The Cinema of Hal Hartley: Flirting with Formalism (Directors' Cuts Series), New York, Columbia University Press, 2016, pp144-158 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, What 'The Bechdel Test' Doesn't Tell Us: Examining Women's Verbal and Vocal (Dis)Empowerment in Cinema, Feminist Media Studies, 16, (6), 2016, p120-123
Jennifer O'Meara, Reimagined Film Posters as Participatory Digital Paratexts, The Journal of Digital Media Arts and Practice,, 9, (2), 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, 'Like Movies for Radio': Media Convergence and the Serial Podcast Sensation, Frames Cinema Journal, (8), 2015, p1-28
Jennifer O'Meara, Character as DJ: Melomania and Diegetically Controlled Music, The New Soundtrack, 5, (2), 2015, p133-151
Jennifer O'Meara, 'We've Got to Work on Your Accent and Vocabulary'- Characterization through Verbal Style in Clueless, Cinema Journal, 53, (3), 2014, p138-145
A Shared Approach to Familial Dysfunction and Sound Design: Wes Anderson's Influence on the Films of Noah Baumbach in, editor(s)Peter C. Kunze , The Films of Wes Anderson: Critical Essays on an Indiewood Icon, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp109-124 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, Review Essay: Performance in the Cinema of Hal Hartley, by Steven Rawle; Hal Hartley (Contemporary Film Directors), by Mark L. Berrettini, Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies,, (27), 2014, p14-20
Jennifer O'Meara, Cate Blanchett's Deconstruction of Performance through Performance, The Cine-Files: A Scholarly Journal of Cinema Studies, (6), 2014, p1-12
Jennifer O'Meara, Inside the Outsider's Ear - Hyperacousia and Marginalized Character Identification, The Soundtrack, 5, (2), 2014, p121-129
Poetic Dialogue - Lyrical Speech in the Work of Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch in, editor(s)Marlisa Santos , Verse, Voice, and Vision: Poetry and the Cinema, Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 2013, pp165-178 , [Jennifer O'Meara]
Jennifer O'Meara, New Spaces of Possibility: Adaptation as Cultural Process, Review of Pockets of Change: Adaptation and Cultural Transition, by Adam Atkinson, Tricia Hopton , Literature/Film Quaterly, 41, (3), 2013, p241-245
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Jennifer O'Meara, XR Practices through the Lens of Screen Studies, d-real Seminar: XR for Creative Practice, O'Reilly Institute, Trinity College Dublin, February 21, 2024, SFI Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real)
Jennifer O'Meara, Mads Damsbo and Emanuel Karlsten, Creative Perspectives on AI, Focus seminar: Another Intelligence, Göteborg Film Festival, Sweden, January 29, 2024
Jennifer O'Meara, `Gaussian girls' enter Hyperreality? Historicizing Augmented Reality Beauty Filters via Analog Filtration Effects, Society of Cinema and Media Studies, 2024, Boston, United Stated, March 14-17th, 2024
Anna Joyce (author) and Jennifer O'Meara (interviewee), "Can True Crime Help Victims of Crime?", 2024, -
Jennifer O'Meara, DALL-E Mini's 'exquisite corpses': co-creating surreal body horror using text-to-image A.I., Representing the Body: Contemporary Discourse and the Real, Glasgow Caledonian University, April 28, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara, From Soft Focus to AR filters: the Evolving, Technologically-Designed Face of Female Stardom, British Association for Film Television and Screen Studies, University of Lincoln, April 3-5, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara, From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: understanding digital hyperreality through the lens of film history, Arts and Humanities in Digital Transition, Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara (panellist), THE FUTURE OF FILM: CINEMATIC ARTS IN THE AGE OF AI. A global round table, Trinity College Dublin, 10th November, 2023, MindRiot Entertainment
Jennifer O'Meara, Imagining and Imaging the Future via Screen Representations of the Hyperreal City, The Synthetic City, Dublin City University, September 6-7, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara (panellist), 'Authentic Creativity and Artificial Intelligence: The Generative Generation'', Beta Festival x Culture File, The Digital Hub; RTE Lyric FM, 2023, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Caoimhe Wandel-Brannigan, Nicholas Johnson, Neill O'Dwyer (panelists), Long Table on Virtual/Augmented/Mixed/Extended Reality, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Festival, September 29th, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara, Re-engineering Rear Projection: Situating Emergent uses of Virtual Production Spaces within Film History, eXtending Reality: Immersive Design, Production and Technology, Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR), University of Portsmouth, September 11, 2023
Jennifer O'Meara and Kata Szita, AR cinema: Visual storytelling and embodied experiences with augmented reality filters and backgrounds , Live Xinema: a festival of research and innovation exploring the role of hybridity and liveness in the future of cinema, University of Nottingham, September 23, 2022, 2022
Jennifer O'Meara, Seminar on Women's Voices in Digital Media, 'Cultural and Critical Theory in Communication', University of Alabama, Department of Journalism & Creative Media, October 5, 2022
Jennifer O'Meara (panel contributor), HUMAN+ Tech Talk: Your Avatar and You -- Identity and Behaviour in the Digital World, HUMAN+ Tech Talk series, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Institute, September 27, 2022, edited by Kata Szita , 2022
Jennifer O'Meara (interviewee), 'Colors: Where did they go? An investigation.', VOX.com, United States, VOX, 2022, -
Jennifer O'Meara (chair & co-organiser), Black Women Filmmakers: A Student Seminar, Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival, March 9th, 2021
Jennifer O'Meara, "Female Archival Voices", Docalogue, (April ), 2021
Jennifer O'Meara, Themed playlist: Our Virtual Selves, Centre for Screen Cultures, University of St Andrews, (May 7), 2020
Jennifer O'Meara (guest contributor), 'The Culture File Debate: Everyone's A Critic', RTÉ Lyric FM, 2020, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Review of Reclaiming Uncanny Spaces: Australian Landscapes from the New Wave to the New Indigenous Cinema, by Matthew Campora , [In]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 7.1, 2020
Jennifer O'Meara (guest contributor), 'Comfort films and COVID-19', The Dave Fanning show, Dublin, RTÉ 2FM, 2020, -
Jennifer O'Meara (regular contributor), '"The Art of the Stream" series ', Culture File, RTÉ Lyric FM, 2020, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Life through a screen: Cinematic space and social distancing, The Irish Times, April 22, 2020
Jennifer O'Meara (guest contributor), 'Episode 98: The Cinematic Voice', The Cinematologists, UK, University of Brighton, 2020, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Lina Wertmüller's Love and Anarchy, Science Gallery Dublin, July 10th, 2019, Douglas Hyde Gallery in collaboration with the Science Gallery
Jennifer O'Meara, Workshop: Hybridity and Embodiment in Researching Gendered Digital Stories, Network for European Cinema and Media Studies, Gdańsk, Poland, June 13-15th, 2019
Jennifer O'Meara, 'The GIF that Keeps on GIFing', Trinity Week, Trinity College Dublin, 2019, -
Jennifer O'Meara (organiser and interviewer), 'Screening of Silence (2012), followed by a Q&A with director Pat Collins and author Ian Maleney', Samuel Beckett Theatre, 2019, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Instagram: an algorithmic return to the avant-garde? , Network for European Cinema and Media Studies, Gdańsk, Poland, June 13-15th, 2019
Jennifer O'Meara, Film Voices + Time: Excavating Vocal Histories in the Digital Archive, Mining Memories: New Explorations in Cinema, Memory and the Past, University College Cork, November 22 2019, 2019
Jennifer O'Meara, ''Women's Politicized Screen Voices' theme week', In Media Res, USA, Media Commons, 2018, - 1-5
Jennifer O'Meara, QFT50, Women in Film, 1968-2018, Queen's Film Theatre, October 27, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Women's Voices in Digital Media, Gender-Thing research and practice symposium, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, May 9, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Jennifer Ryan, Mia Mullarkey, Aoife O'Toole, 'The Irish Times Women's podcast, Episode 258', 2018, -
Jennifer O'Meara, The aesthetics of magnified bodies in Instagram's ASMR digital videos, BODIES OF DATA: INTERSECTING MEDICAL AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES, Royal Irish Academy/UCD, November 22-23, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Overcoming challenges to rewarding interactive storytelling, 'On The Rocks' Arts Festival, St Andrews, Scotland, April 7, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Meme girls vs. Trump: digitally recycled screen dialogue as political discourse, Screen, University of Glasgow, 29 June-July 1st, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Remixing actresses voices on the You Must Remember This podcast, Network for European Cinema Studies conference, University of Amsterdam, 27-29 June, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Fictional "Basic Bitches" do battle with President Trump, Console-ing Passions International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism, Bournemouth University, 11-13 July, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara and Megan McGurk, 'Lana Turner in Ziegfeld Girl, 'Sass Mouth Dames' podcast series', 2018, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Sartorial satire: merging fashion and identity politics on Instagram's "everyoutfitonSATC, Fashion, Costume and Visual Cultures, University of Zagreb, 17-19 July, 2018
Jennifer O'Meara, Shaping Women's Screen Voices: Research Notes from the Margaret Herrick Library, 2018, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Teaching Genre through Netflix, Critical Studies in Television Online, 2017, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Engaging Dialogue in American Independent Cinema, Centre for Film Studies public talk, University of St Andrews, February 7, 2017
Jennifer O'Meara, Speaking Across Screens: Cyberfeminism and the Digital Recycling of Women's Voices, Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference, Fairmont Chicago, March 22-26, 2017
Jennifer O'Meara, Introductory speaker, Lost in Translation (screening), Festival of Translation, St Andrews, Scotland, April 6, 2017
Jennifer O'Meara, Singer, Narrator, Host: the Woman's Voice as Guide in Inherent Vice (2014), The Lobster (2015) and Serial (2014), Network for European Cinema Studies annual conference, University of Potsdam, July 29-31, 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, Vocally Fried to Fetishized: the Politics of the Female Voice in Contemporary Screen Media, Communications, Media and Culture Research Seminar Series, University of Stirling, November 2, 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, Fading and Emerging: Japan's Women Filmmakers, TED-x event, Explore Japan, University College Dublin, April, 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, Beyoncé's Lemonade and the Transmedia Swirl, Critical Studies in Television Online, 2016, -
In Media Res, April 11-15, (2016), Jennifer O'Meara, [eds.], Coordinator of theme week on 'Fan-made Film Posters',
Jennifer O'Meara, Review of Thinking Through Acting: Performative Indices and Philosophical Assertions, by Aaron Taylor , [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 3.4, 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, The Troubled Production of Troubling Images in the Contemporary Music Documentary, Music and Visual Cultures International Conference, Maynooth University, July 22-23, 2016
Jennifer O'Meara, (Re)acting to Digital Technology in The Comeback and Web Therapy, Critical Studies in Television Online, 2016, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Workshop: The Video Essay: A Practical and Pedagogical Survey of the Medium, Huston School of Film & Digital Media research seminar, National University of Ireland, Galway, January, 2015
Audrey Parmentier and Jennifer O'Meara, 'Interview: Feminist Film Festival - Les femmes au premier plan', LePetitJournal.com, LePetitJournal.com, 2015, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Disaffected does not equal depressed: a response to Lena Dunham's Daria diagnosis, 2015, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Christina Ricci's Enduring ''Bad Girl'' Body, Irish Screen Studies Seminar, University of Ulster, Belfast, May, 2015
Jennifer O'Meara, Workshop: An Introduction to Videographic Film Studies, Huston School of Film & Digital Media research seminar, National University of Ireland, Galway, October, 2015
Gemma Creagh, Jennifer O'Meara, Rachel Lysaght, 'Film Ireland podcast on women in Irish film industry', Dublin, 2015, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy: An Allegorical or Exploitative Take on Korea's Violent Past?, Film and History: The Korean Example, Centre of Korean Studies and the Centre for Film Studies, SOAS, University of London, November, 2015
Darragh McManus and Jennifer O'Meara (interviewee), ''Return of the Serial Thriller'', Irish Independent, Ireland, Irish Independnet, 2015, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Character as DJ: The Implications of Diegetically Controlled Music, British Association for Film, Television and Screen Studies Annual Conference, Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image, University of London, April, 2014
Jennifer O'Meara, Watch Her Tongue: An Introduction to Female Film Dialogue, International Women's Week event, Trinity College Dublin, March, 2014
Jennifer O'Meara, Cinema Journal Presents, In Media Res, 'Quoting Characters: Subtitled Images and Identification, 2014, -
Jennifer O'Meara, Listen Carefully - Straining to Hear as Active Audio-viewing, Network for European Cinema Studies Annual Conference: 'Creative Energies >> Creative Industries', Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, June, 2014
Jennifer O'Meara, Conference report: Revisiting Star Studies, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, (6), 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, Verbal integration of the soundtrack; narrowing the gap between dialogue, music and effects, Cinesonika 3 - The Third International Conference & Festival of Sound Design, University of Ulster, Derry, February, 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, Playing with persona, while playing oneself - Cate Blanchett and Tom Waits in Coffee and Cigarettes, Cinematic Reflections on Stardom and the 'Stardom Film', King's College London, September, 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, Talk is cheap - Re-emergence of the classical dialogue style of the 1930s in contemporary independent cinema, Marginalised Mainstream Conference: Fading and Emerging, University of London, September, 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, Star Speed; the Fast-Talking Voices of Independent Cinema, Revisiting Star Studies, Newcastle University, June, 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, He said, She Said - Dialogue and Gender in Contemporary Cinema, Contemporary Gendered Performance & Practice, Queen's University Belfast, April, 2013
Jennifer O'Meara, Language as aural effect; the musical qualities of film dialogue, Language/Cinema, University of Leeds, December, 2012
Jennifer O'Meara, ''Are You Talking to Me?''; An Introduction to the Design of Film Dialogue, 'Uprising: Young Scholars and Artists in Dialogue', 'Dublintellectual' seminar series,, The Generator, Smithfield, Dublin, May, 2012
Jennifer O'Meara, 'Mouth as Nervous Brain' - Deflating Jewish Stereotypes in Greenberg, Genres in Transit: Rethinking Genres in Contemporary Cinema, Trinity College Dublin, April, 2012
Research Expertise
Projects
- Title
- Women's Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes
- Summary
- This book, to be published by University of Texas Press in early 2022, examines the representation, reception and remediation of female voices in contemporary screen media, including how digital technologies, formats and platforms (like YouTube, Virtual Reality, GIFs, podcasts and voice-activated assistants) are impacting women's voices in more traditional screen formats like cinema. Pioneering a transmedial approach for analysing women's screen voices in the digital era, the book examines how concepts like 'expanded cinema' and 'proliferating screens' can alter the presentation of voices as much as images--in part by allowing for verbal/vocal echoes to travel from one screen medium to another. With a dual focus on female characters and performers in English-language media, I argue that the contemporary media landscape provides new ways to amplify women's voices (including historical ones), but also new ways to fetishise, police and silence them. The book revises earlier conceptions of the female screen voice in analogue film, as presented in Kaja Silverman's The Acoustic Mirror (1988), Amy Lawrence's Echo and Narcissus (1991) and Britta H. Sjogren's Into the Vortex: Female Voice and Paradox in Film (2006). Using the premise of the vocal echo, and extending Silverman's focus on 'the acoustic mirror' as it relates to voice-over and sound-image relations, I propose a new symbolic functioning for the female screen voice in the 21st century; wherein this mirror has shattered, dispersing vocal shards across a much broader range of screens.
- Funding Agency
- Carnegie Trust, Scotland (partial)
- Date From
- 2017
- Date To
- 2022
- Title
- The Abstracted Self and the Digital Avant-Garde
- Summary
- This project will analyse formal and thematic connections between digital screen cultures and experimental film and art practices of the 20th century. The research aims to historicise trends in Augmented Reality (AR), glitch art, and experimental digital video streams in relation to the artistic traditions of Surrealism, Futurism and Cubism. This will be achieved through a theoretical focus on overlapping aesthetics and processes, as well as the practitioners' creative deployment of the technologies of their time. In particular, the project seeks to examine how both experimental cultures offer new ways of experiencing the human body, with an emphasis on mediated presentations of the abstracted self. Envisioned as a monograph with complementary gallery installation components, the first publication from the project is as follows: O'Meara, 'Touchscreens, tactility, and material traces: From avant-garde artists to Instagram ASMRtists,' NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn 2019).
- Date From
- 2018
- Title
- Therapeutic Uses of Digital Media
- Summary
- This project aims to establish a cross-disciplinary approach to studying the therapeutic uses of digital media by developing a network of psychology, neuroscience and media studies researchers who can, together, examine how digital media formats and practice can help alleviate particular mental health issues. By examining a range of relaxation focused videos, podcasts and apps in terms of their psychological impact (on mood and emotion) and their physiological impact on the brain and other parts of the body, the project aims to offer a pioneering understanding of digital forms of relaxation and therapy, and to make recommendations about how such media might be used as part of a personalised treatment plan for those who experience conditions like anxiety and depression.
- Funding Agency
- Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, in partnership with Science Foundation Ireland
- Date From
- July 2020
Recognition
Awards and Honours
Elected to Fellowship, Trinity College Dublin
'Honorable Mention' for the Best Monograph prize at the British Association of Film, Television & Screen Studies
Irish Research Council, Starting Laureate Award
Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant
Ussher Fellowship, Trinity College Dublin
Foundation Scholarship, TCD
Gender, Diversity and Inclusivity funding award, University of St Andrews
Teaching Enhancement Fund, University of St Andrews
Abd El-Modtaal Prize, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, TCD
P.J. Drudy Prize in Economics, Trinity College Dublin
Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund, in partnership with Science Foundation Ireland
Provost's Project Award, Trinity College Dublin. "Experiments in Digital Screen Culture: from Avant-Garde Film to Augmented Reality."
Arts Council of Ireland 'Festivals and Event' funding award (with film festival).
Irish Research Council Starting Laureate Award, "From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality: Reformulating Screen Studies at the Precipice of Hyper-reality."
Memberships
Board Member, Irish Screen Studies network
Advisory Board for Film Matters (US-based journal).
Advisory Board member for the Centre for Screen Cultures, University of St Andrews.