in the screen and media studies Program at Waikato University, Hamilton, whose research explores how intersections between media, religion, and culture are creating new identities in contemporary New Zealand. From 2016 to 2019 Hardy was an investigator on the Royal Society’s Marsden Fund Project Te Maurea Whiritoi: the sky as a cultural resource - Māori astronomy, ritual and ecological knowledge, outputs from which included curating a section of the Te Whaanau Maarama (Family of Light) exhibition on the recent resurgence of the indigenous celebrations of the rising of the Matariki constellation in winter. She also has an interest in audiences for popular culture and was one of four authors of the 2017 volume Fans, Blockbusterization and the Transformation of Cinematic Desire: Global Receptions of the Hobbit Film Trilogy (Palgrave Macmillan).
Mette Hjort is chair professor of humanities and dean of arts at Hong Kong Baptist University, affiliate professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington, and visiting professor of cultural industries at the University of South Wales. Hjort holds an honorary doctorate in transnational cinema studies from the University of Aalborg and has served on the board of the Danish Film Institute (appointed by the Danish Ministry of Culture). Her current research focuses on moving images as they relate to public value in the context of health and well-being.
Pietari Kääpä is a reader in media and communications at University of Warwick. He is a specialist in environmental screen media, focusing especially on environmental media production, policies, practices, and content (especially film and television). He has published widely in the field, including Environmental Management of the Media (Routledge 2018) and Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas (Bloomsbury 2014). He also works on media industry studies, especially in relation to Nordic film and television. Publications include The Politics of Nordsploitation (with Tommy Gustafsson, Bloomsbury 2021) and Nordic Genre Film (with Tommy Gustafsson, Edinburgh University Press 2015). He is an editor of Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and a docent (affiliate professor) in film and television studies at the University of Helsinki. He is principal investigator (with Hunter Vaughan) of the AHRC Network on Global Green Media Production (https://globalgreenmedianetwork. com/).
Paisley Livingston (BA, philosophy, Stanford University, PhD The Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He taught previously at the University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, and McGill University. He has published various papers and books in aesthetics, including Art and Intention (Oxford University Press 2005), “History of the Ontology of Art” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), and Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman (Oxford University Press 2009).
Anne Ahn Lund is co-founder of Jordnær Creative and Nordic Eco Media Alliance (NEMA). She is teaching creative sustainability in the Nordic countries, has trained production assistants and runners in sustainable practices, and has presented recommendations directly to the Danish Minister of Culture. Lund is a filmmaker and has taught film production practices at University of Copenhagen and The Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She holds an MA in film studies with a focus on embodied aesthetics.
Josefine Madsen founded Jordnær Creative in 2017 to fight for climate action and social justice in the creative industries. She has put the climate footprint of the cultural sector on the Danish public agenda with appearances and press coverage in national radio as well as news media. Madsen is also a co-founding member of Nordic Eco Media Alliance (NEMA). She holds a BA and an MA in film and media studies from the University of Copenhagen, and specialized in sustainable film and TV production as the first Danish student to do so. Furthermore, Madsen has worked with documentaries and film financing.
Ruth McElroy is professor of creative industries and faculty head of research at the University of South Wales. She is co-director with professor Lisa Lewis of the Centre for the Study of Media and Culture in Small Nations. In public life, McElroy is chair of Ffilm Cymru Wales and a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee Wales. She helps inform media policy through her membership of the Institute of Welsh Affair’s Media Policy Group. McElroy’s main research interests are in film and TV studies, media policy and cultural identity with a particular interest in minority-language media.
Dooley Murphy is an audiovisual media researcher poised to receive his PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Department of Communication. His recently-completed doctoral thesis addresses the form and function of interactive virtual reality (VR) artworks from a cognitive–analytic perspective, with a particular focus on manifestations of narrative. He has published on video game player and VR participant experience, the structure and process of audiovisual narration, and design strategies in interactive storytelling. His next avenue of research will likely be avatars, characters, and virtual embodiment. In his spare time, he likes to make media art about the wonderful mundanity of technology and culture.
Ted Nannicelli teaches at the University of Queensland. His most recent books are Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Truth in Visual Media: Aesthetics, Ethics Politics (co-edited with Marguerite La Caze, Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He is the editor of Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind.
Dr. Caitriona Noonan is senior lecturer in media and communication in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University. She is an active researcher in the areas of film and television production, creative labor, and cultural policy. She is co-author of the book Producing British Television Drama Local Production in a Global Era (2019) with Ruth McElroy. More information about her research is available at smallnationsscreen.org.
Tom O’Regan was a key figure in the development of cultural and media studies in Australia. His major works include Australian Television Culture (1993), Australian National Cinema (1996), The Film Studio: Film Production in the Global Economy (2005, with Ben Goldsmith), Local Hollywood: Global Film Production and the Gold Coast (2010, with Ben Goldsmith and Susan Ward), and Rating the Audience: The Business of Media (2011, with Mark Balnaves and Ben Goldsmith). He co-founded Continuum: Journal for Media & Cultural Studies and edited it between 1987 and 1994. In addition to his prolific and influential research output, Professor O’Regan held a series of key leadership roles throughout his career. He was director of the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication from 1996 to 1998 at Murdoch University and Director of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy at Griffith University from 1999 to 2002. He was Australia’s UNESCO professor of communication from 2001 to 2003 and elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2002.
Glenn Parsons is an associate professor of philosophy at Ryerson University in Toronto. His interests include aesthetics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. His book Aesthetics and Nature (Bloomsbury 2008) is currently being revised for a new edition.
Dr. Karen Pearlman is a senior lecturer in screen practice and production at Macquarie University and the author of Cutting Rhythms (Focal Press 2016). Her research into creative practice, distributed cognition, and feminist film histories has produced a number of published articles and chapters, and three award winning short films about Soviet women filmmakers in the 1920s and the 1930s. The third of this trilogy, I want to make a film about women (2019), the case study for the chapter in this volume, was long-listed for an Oscar, short-listed for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award, and has won three best directing awards (from the Australian Directors’ Guild, Women in Film and Television Australia, and Cinéfest Oz), along with 10 other nationally competitive awards.
Carl Plantinga is Arthur H. De Kruyter chair of communication at Calvin University. His two latest books are Alternative Realities (2020) and Screen Stories: Emotion and the Ethics of Engagement (2018). He is also co-editor of Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion (1999) and The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (2009). He is former president of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI).
Anna Potter is an associate professor of creative industries at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She is a researcher focusing on children’s screen production cultures