Dr Matt Selway

Teaching

I have taught an extensive range of modules across both Media and Film Studies at all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate study. This has included content on visual culture, music and media, film and the American imagination, film history, the future of media and technology, and employability focussed modules that help students build creative-critical skills that enhance their potential to find work in the Creative Industries.

Research

My most recent work examines the ways that TikTok is used by adolescents to create content themed around their experiences of mental ill health and psychiatric inpatient experiences. The article explores the issues this content raises as well as what it may tell us about the uses of social media to make useful and progressive impacts upon young peoples' experiences of mental illness and treatment.

I have published in the past about the use of sound design and film scores as sonic techniques for representing mental illnesses in various fictional films, as well as research that considered the visual tropes often used to represent mental ill health in particularly gendered ways.

I have given several papers and keynotes at conferences and public engagement events in the UK and internationally in places including the USA, Canada, and Greece.

Publications and conferences

Selway, M. (2014). Gender, Melancholia and the “Fallen Woman”: Gendered Visions of Mental Illness in The Hours. In: Guerra, L, G. & Nicdao, J, A. (eds.) Narratives of Suffering: Meaning and Experience in a Transcultural Approach. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Conference experience (speaker)

• Brains for Hire: Psychiatric Consultation and Film Production Practices – Montreal, Canada. SCMS Annual Conference – 25th March 2015.
• Mental Illness, American Exceptionalism and National Narrative in A Beautiful Mind and The Aviator. Seattle, Washington. SCMS Annual Conference – 23rd March 2014.
• Monster: A Critical Perspective of the American Dream – Norwich, UK. UEA Study Day: ‘Imagining a Community’: Media and National Identity. – 20th February 2014.
• Re-evaluating Discourses on Children’s Exposure to Mental Illness on Television. – Norwich, UK. UEA Study Day: ‘Kid Culture’: Thinking Differently About Children’s Media. – 6th November 2013.
• Gender, Melancholia and the “Fallen Woman”: Gendered Visions of Mental Illness in The Hours. – Athens, Greece. ‘Making Sense of Suffering’ Conference. – 11th November 2013.

Conference experience (organiser)

• 2 to 3 July 2013. MeCCSA Postgraduate Network (PGN) Annual Conference. University of East Anglia.

Professional activities

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

I am currently level 1 coordinator for the Media and Joint Honour Film and Media programmes, meaning I am academic tutor for all first-year students on those degree programmes.

I am a registered NHS volunteer, having previously used my film studies research into representations of mental illness on screen to help put together a series of screenings for use in mental health provision.