Prof Sean Redmond

I research in the areas of stardom and celebrity; genre studies, and science fiction cinema in particular; film authorship; film sound; film and affect; Asian Cinema; and whiteness studies. 

I utilise various forms of empirical methods in my research including eye tracking, autoethnography, and the 'storying the self' method.

I edit the journal Celebrity Studies, short-listed for the best new academic journal 2011. I chaired the Inaugural Celebrity Studies Conference in December 2012 and was on the organisation committee for the 2014, 2016, and 2018 conferences - the last one held at the University of Sapienza in Rome.

My 2017 monograph, Liquid Space: Digital Age Science Film and Television has been reviewed as: ‘In this immersive yet critical book, Sean Redmond never forgets the structures of power behind the enticing mirrored surfaces of science fiction. A warm, generous and honest academic-poet: he gently shapes our understanding by sharing his personal experiences.’ – Will Brooker, Kingston University; author of Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-first Century Batman

‘Accessible and passionately written, this is a welcome contribution to contemporary science fiction film and television theory. Especially noteworthy – for its rarity and descriptive power – is the absolutely terrific last chapter, devoted to close analysis of recent science fiction’s aesthetics of sound.’ – Vivian Sobchack, UCLA; author of Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film.

‘In this ground-breaking study, Sean Redmond travels to the far reaches of screen outer space, previously undiscovered and unexplored, to reveal new ways of seeing science fiction as an immersive, interactive experience at one with our digital lives.’ – Howard Hughes, author of Outer Limits: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Science-Fiction Films

‘Cinema is science fiction: this startling, persuasive conclusion guides Sean Redmond's enquiry into the liquid state of digital culture seen through the lenses, heard through the speakers and felt through the trackpads of science fiction film and television. From capitalism to race, surveillance to the sublime, in a brilliant constellation of close readings Redmond tracks the new heavens and hells of our compulsorily fluid condition.’ – Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London

My most recent monograph, Celebrity, for the Routledge Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies Series, published in August 2018, has been reviewed as: 'Sean Redmond offers the most useful toolkit to understand how celebrity culture makes media matter across its many platforms. This is more than a book about celebrity culture, it is the perfect tool to understand media today.' Joke Hermes, Inholland University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands

'Sean Redmond here continues his distinctive, highly engaged exploration of popular celebrity, now interleaving his insistence on its affective dimension with a circuit of culture approach. The resulting study should find a place on every celebrity scholar’s bookshelf.' Frances Bonner, University of Queensland, Australia.

'In this dazzling star-turn of a book, Sean Redmond offers a guide and a conceptual inventory to the circuits of celebrity. Celebrity expertly analyses dominant approaches as well as recovering celebrity’s all-too-often excluded energies of affect, embodiment and texturality. By insistently weaving fandom into scholarship, and the affective into the cultural, Redmond casts a spellbinding look at the fascinations, provocations and multisensory complexities of celebrity today.' Matt Hills, University of Huddersfield, UK.

Fouding Editor of Celebrity Studies;

Editorial Board Member of Illusions;

Editorial Board Member of Feminist Media Studies;

Editorial Review Member of Continuum's Film Authorship Series.

I teach in the areas of film and television genre, film and television sound, stardom and celebrity, film authorship, black and Asian cinema, film and television performance, screen aesthetics.

I am currently supervising 7 PhDs, with students working on American comics in the Age of Trump, science fiction film and literature, the conspiracy film, revisioning the western and final girl films, and star and celebrity analysis.

For 2022:

ALC104: Media Genres: Negotiating Textual Forms

ACF304: The Celebrity Industries: Star Images, Fan Cultures and Performance

Stardom and Celebrity; film and television genre; science fiction studies; eye tracking; screen phenomenology; film and television sound; film authroship; audience research.

September 2011: 'Fast Cinema', delivered at the World Cinema Now conference held at Monash University;

November 2011: Invited paper: 'Celebrity Aesthetics'at the What is there left to say about Celebrity Conference,held at the University of Queensland;

December 2011: Keynote Address:'Performing Age in the Star Body of Mickey Rourke', at the Age Spots and Spotlights: Celebrity, Performance and Ageing Conference, Birbeck, London;

July 2012: 'It is a Miracle to Me: Cate Blanchett and the Aura of Perfected, Female Whiteness', at the Images of Whiteness 2nd Global Conference, Mansfield College,Oxford, 7-9th July 2012;

December 2012: ‘The Aging Mickey Rourke’, at the 1st International Celebrity Studies Conference, Deakin University;

August 2013: ‘Eye-Tracking Sherlock’, at the 2nd International Visual Methods Conference, University of Wellington;

Keynote: ‘Sensing Celebrity’, at the 2nd International Celebrity Studies Conference, Royal Holloway, June, 2014;

Keynote: 'Lazarus Rises', the David Bowie Conference at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, September 2016;

Keynote: The Revisiting Audiences: Reception, Identity, Technology Conference at the University of Otago (June, 2016);

Keynote: 'Eye-Tracking Abstractions' at th New Directions in Screen Studies Conference, Monash University, June 12017;

Keynote: 'David Bowie in Cameo', Bridging Gaps: National Identity in Persona, Branding, and Activism Conference at Curtain University, November 2017.

I am an ARC Assessor

ABC National Radio

Sky News

The Screening Melbourne Research group

The Eye Tracking the Moving Image Research group

TechnEcology Research network

The Asian Media and Cultural Studies Network

Arts and Education Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award, 2012

The Asian Media and Cultural Studies Network Faculty Partnership Award, 2021.

Stardom and Celebrity

For Bloomsbury Academic Press, I am Series Editor (with Jian Xu) of the Asian Celebrity and Fandom Series,

For Wayne State Press, I have recently edied a book collection on the star image of high-profile, Hollywood actor Tom Cruise. The 2021 book  assesses the way Cruise embodies such qualities as American masculinity, aspects of confessional culture, and the myth of the American dream.

I have recently guest edited a special edition of Celebrity Studies on Desecrating Celebrity (March, 2020). The edition touches upon the perversity of celebrity culture, and the way it supports and resists patriarchal and heterosexual culture. 

Audience Research

With CO.AS.IT. I have undertaken a Storying Italian Migrant Identity project that has researched the way Italian migrants, now aged in their 70s, recall, remember and reflect upon their arrival to Australia.

Contracted with Manchester University Press, the Loneliness Room Project explores how people experience loneliness, using the notion of the loneliness room as the central way to express it. For the purpose of this project the loneliness room is defined as a real or imagined space where people feel lonely or go to find loneliness. One may also prefer to call this quality or state one of aloneness where it is solitude and isolation that is sought. Those interested in taking part are asked to respond to the idea of the loneliness room through sharing a creative responses, such as video, photographs, letters,  and/or completing a short questionnaire.

With Joanna Tai, I have written an article on the video essay as an empowering form of assessment for a Special Edition of the Journal of Media Education and Practice. Drawing on the idea of radical pedagogy, I suggest that the video essay has the ability to open up the learning 'box'.

Film Genre

For Routledge Advances in Film Studies Research Series, i have just edited a new book collection on Joker (2019). Titled, Breaking Down Joker: Violence, Loneliness, Trajedy, the 2021 book offers a compelling, multi-disciplinary examination of a landmark film and media event that was simultaneously both celebrated and derided, and which arrived at a time of unprecedented social malaise. The collection breaks down Joker to explore its aesthetic and ideological representations within the social and cultural context in which it was released.

I have also recently published a special edition of the journal, New Review of Film and Television Studies, on the film, Joker. The edition draws on leading scholars who look at aspects such as sound, mental illness, dance, patrirachy and loneliness. The special edition was published in 2021.