Dr Alaina Schempp

• PhD in Film, University of Kent, Canterbury (UK)
• MA in Media Studies, University of Amsterdam (NL)
• BA in Film & Video Studies and English Language & Literature, University of Michigan (USA)

I received my BA in 2006 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I double-majored in English Language & Literature and Film & Video Studies with a minor in Screenwriting. I practiced screenwriting and worked as a freelance video editor in Los Angeles before completing a research MA in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam in 2012. I received a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Kent, Canterbury in 2019 with a dissertation entitled A Poetics of Time and Timing in the Moving Image, which I am currently turning into a book.

• Introduction to Film Studies: Styles and Forms
• Creative Practice: Film
• Discovering Creative Practice
• Film Culture & Media Skills
• Filmmaking
• Studying Film A
• Studying Film B
• Film Theory and Criticism
• Screenwriting: Film
• Film Production Project
• Professional Skills
• Guided Project in Editing and Production (MA)
• AV Dissertation (MA)

If I have the capacity to take on new PhD candidates, I will consider PhD proposals, particularly those that take an analytic-cognitive approach to a variety of audiovisual media including films, television, comics, screenplays, video games, and online and short form video.

Find out more - our PhD Film Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My current research interests include the perception of temporality and timing in the moving image with special attention to comic and suspense timing in contemporary genre films. I have presented my research at international conferences including the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image Conference, the International Conference for Philosophy and Film, the Conference for Cognitive Futures in the Humanities, and the British Psychological Society Conference on Temporal Experience.