Jessica is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge researching film narratology and aesthetics.

Jessica read English (BA) at the University of Kent and Film Aesthetics (MSt) at the University of Oxford. In 2023, she joined Cambridge as a doctoral student of Film and Screen Studies, generously funded by a Cambridge Trust Vice-Chancellor's Award and Newnham College Scholarship.

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Jessica’s thesis evaluates narrative and aesthetic strategies as seen in 'loose' films of varied styles, genres, and scholarly prominence. With theoretical support from literary studies and philosophy, her thesis seeks to freshly illuminate the narrative film by closely tracing narrative tension, belatedness, detours, delays, digressions, openness, and the resulting production of dramatic resonance.

In other research, Jessica has written about play and fabulation in Jacques Rivette’s Céline et Julie vont en bateau; the emotional contours of style in Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring; and cinemas of ephemerality, specifically in David Lean’s Brief Encounter, Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, and Chantal Akerman’s Saute ma ville.

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Outside academia, Jessica is the founding editor-in-chief of Wasteland Arts and manages Wasteland's website and newsletter; she co-convenes Close-Up student reading group; she has attended film festivals as a press delegate and worked as a pre-selection juror; and she has contributed essays on literature and film for various online magazines, including MUBI Notebook. Between degrees, she has also worked as a private literature tutor and in academic administration at the University of Oxford.