Dr Struan Gray
Senior Lecturer, Film BA(Hons)
Struan Gray is a senior lecturer in the School of Film and Television at Falmouth University, teaching on the Film BA and the Film and Television MA. After studying Journalism, Film and Media at Cardiff University, he moved to Chile to work for the Santiago Times, where he reported on politics, culture and the environment. He moved into academia in 2014, completing his doctoral studies at the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories, in the University of Brighton. Subsequently he has been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of London, and he is a founding member of the Memory Narrative and Histories Research Collective. His research engages with debates about representation, cultural memory and the politics of time in ‘post-conflict’ and postdictatorship societies. In 2022 he published the monograph Picturing Ghosts: Memories Traces and Prophesies of Rebellion in Postdictatorship Chilean Film, released as part of Peter Lang’s Cultural Memories series. He is open to supervising or examining PhD projects on conflict and visual culture, cultural memory, haunting, experimental/activist film, landscape representation and the politics of time.
External Links
Qualifications
Qualifications
| Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | PhD in Film Studies | University of Brighton |
| 2011 | BA in Journalism, Film and Media | Cardiff University |
Research Interests
Research interests and expertise
Struan's research explores visual culture and the politics of memory in post-conflict and post-dictatorship contexts. His monograph Picturing Ghosts: Memories, Traces and Prophesies of Rebellion (2022) examined the role of documentary and fiction film in negotiating the afterlives of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. He is particularly interested in the concept of haunting as a theoretical lens through which transformative understandings and representations of the present past can be developed. His most recent research has considered the work of experimental/activist filmmaking collectives in Latin America, working in the context of recent mass protests. He has also increasingly examined the impact or agency of the non-human on how the past is collectively remembered, examining how rivers and the Pacific Ocean have been experienced and framed as spaces of memory or disappearance.
Research outputs
- Picturing Ghosts: Memories, Traces and Prophesies of Rebellion in Postdictatorship Chilean Film
- Unwieldy Matter: Liquid landscapes of memory in postdictatorship Chilean film
- Behind the Neoclassical Façade: A Haunted National Monument in Chilean Film
- Entrevistas a los colectivos audiovisuales del estallido social chileno
- A Haunted Transition: Reckoning with Ghosts in Postdictatorship Chilean Film (PhD Thesis)
Research topics
- Post-dictatorship cultures
- Latin American film
- Cinematic cartography
- Haunting and spectrality
- The politics of time
- Cultural memory
- Visual culture and social movements
- Landscape representation
Areas of teaching
- Film Theory and History
- The Politics of Representation
- Experimental Film
- Non-Western Cinemas
- Third Cinema
- Documentary
Research Students
Current research students
Elena Stockton - Who Shapes Us? An Autoethnographic Response to Contemporary Transgender Representation on Television
Roel Meuleman - The picturing of Kernow and Calabria in the contemporary cinematic works of Mark Jenkin and Michelangelo Frammartino: A construction of 'peripheral' place and identity
Sarah Sloan - Fashioning the Gothic: The Aesthetics of Landscape and the Body in Contemporary Literature, Film, and Television
Professional Engagement
Engagement with professional associations and societies
Struan is a member of the Memory Studies Association and the Society for Latin American Studies, presenting at their conferences on a regular basis. He is also a founding member of the Memory, Narrative and Histories Research Collective.
