Hi - I'm Jessica, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge.

I read English (BA) at the University of Kent and Film Aesthetics (MSt) at the University of Oxford. In 2023, I 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.

My research focuses on 'loose' film style and its effects within the narrative film. I aim to demonstrate that a 'looser' aesthetic (referring to performance, direction, dialogue, editing, camerawork, narrative structure, or scene continuity, as distinct from that seen in 'open' or 'slow' cinemas) can usefully categorise various stylistic approaches to narrative filmmaking, and that its ascription and evaluation can freshly illuminate even well-studied films and filmmakers.

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My thesis intersects various other research interests, including film aesthetics, slow cinema, cinéma vérité, the filmography of John Cassavetes, the New Hollywood, the cinema and writing of Chantal Akerman, narratology, the cinema of Jacques Rivette, philosophy of art, screen studies, modernism, approaches to narrative editing, reflexivity, film interpretation and criticism, visual narration, and the philosophy of film.

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Outside academia, I am the founding editor-in-chief of Wasteland Arts and manage Wasteland's website and newsletter; I have attended film festivals as a press delegate and worked as a pre-selection juror; and I have contributed essays on literature and film for various editorial outlets, including MUBI Notebook. Between degrees, I have also worked as a private literature tutor and in administration at the University of Oxford.