Media and Digital Culture news (June 2025)

Here’s what our research group members have been working on in the last few months.

  • Kirsty Fairclough was an invited speaker at the Popular Culture Association in New Orleans, with a contribution called “This is Me: Music Documentary and Radical Vulnerability”.
  • Sara Nesteruk published an essay called “Structures and Mappings: Research as Narratives” in Cubic Journal
  • Sara Nesteruk presented a paper called “Memory, Testimony and the Imagination: Jerry Berman’s Letters” at the ASN Annual World Convention at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, 22–24 May 2025, New York.
  • Kirsty Fife published a book chapter called “Records, Subjects and Agents: Exploring Archives of Popular Music through Critical Archival Studies” in the Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies
  • Debbie Ballin and Rachel Genn have had an abstract accepted to present research about Battledress at Visible Evidence VIIII, Temple University, Philadelphia , USA, in August 2025
  • Debbie Ballin and Rachel Genn have had a book chapter called “Battledress: Deconstructing Autofiction and Reassembling the Selves in Immersive Documentary” accepted for publication in Expanded Storytelling Across Media: Creative Practices and Critical Approaches (Routledge), due for publication in 2026.
  • Benjamin Green has been commissioned (alongside collaborative partner Gabriella Rhodes) to create original sculptural work using 16mm film and crafted clay objects for Coed Coexist. This is a project initiated by Pen Llŷn artists Junko Mori & John Egan in partnership with Plas Glyn-y-Weddw which launched with a symposium in September 2024. The essence of the project draws our attention to trees and woodland, seeking out wider connections, desires and reliance on these ecosystems while connecting community, creativity and environmental stewardship. The project as a whole aspires to celebrate the local area and the communities based in Pen Llŷn and will culminate in an exhibition between May and July 2026, where the work will be shown.