What's on

Performances, workshops, events and seminars are shown on this page, where they're of interest to Communications, Drama and Film students.

Please remember that coursework-related events may not appear until a week before the event, so please check back regularly.

Fri 30 Jan

Start time: 10:00

Women's Transnational Theatre Networks 1780-1914

Presented by: Dr Kate Newey
Location: ONLINE

We're pleased to invite you to our first work-in-progress meeting of the ERC/UKRI funded project, Women's Transnational Theatre Networks, 1780-1920, 30th January, from 10am to 4pm in WH3.

The colloquium will focus on the breadth of women's creative and performance practices in Ireland, India, Australia, France, and Portugal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, presenting ongoing research on south Asian dance in the nineteenth century, amateur performance and its cultural politics in Ireland, Indian gardens and art, funerary practices and gender, French women's and animals' rights activist, Marie Huot, early Australian theatre, and women's work in translating French and German playwrights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Speakers from the network involved in the project, speaking about their work on women's creative (so far), including the Exeter based team (Kate Newey, Pat Smyth, Priya Venkat-Raman and PhD student Kitty Vega) and Professor Cathy Turner, who is one of our Advisory Board members. Other speakers include Dr Clare Siviter (University of Bristol); Professor Ignacio Ramos-Gay (University of Valencia), Dr Kate Flaherty (Australian National University), and Dr Marta Rosa (University of Lisbon).

We will be starting and ending sessions on the hour, with lunch served at 13:00. We're alternating sessions which have prepared papers, and more wide-ranging roundtable discussions. A schedule will be circulated nearer to the event.

We're meeting in hybrid formation - in person in WH3 for those in Exeter, and online via Eventbrite & Zoom.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1980469903795?aff=oddtdtcreator

Wed 04 Feb

Start time: 16:00

Masterclass by Andy Littledale: A career across Media

Location: TS2 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

Andy Littledale is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Condense, a Bristol-based startup that streams live events as 3D content into video games. He also oversees development of Layerhouse, a virtual production tool that places real actors into GenAI scenes. Andy is also a Honorary Professor of Industrial Innovation at University of Bristol.

Previously, Andy co-founded SecondSync, a TV analytics company that Twitter acquired in 2014. After the acquisition, he led development of Twitter’s analytics products. His career began at the BBC, and he also ran a digital creative agency serving clients like Aardman Animations and Adobe. From broadcast analytics to immersive video and AI-driven content, his work spans the intersection of media and technology.

Wed 11 Feb

Start time: 16:30

"God is SO back": reactionary feminism, cultural Christianity, and the digital mirror-world

Location: TS1 Alexander Building, Thornlea, New North Road, Postcode: EX4 4LA Show on Map

In recent years, Christian discourses and symbols have become increasingly prominent in Anglo-American popular and political culture. Celebrities from Russell Brand to Nicki Minaj have publicly converted to or reaffirmed their Christianity. High-profile members of the “New Atheist” movement have converted to Christianity or declared their allegiance to “cultural Christianity”. Manosphere podcasters and “manfluencers” increasingly discuss and debate issues around Christian faith. As a Glamour UK magazine headline recently put it: “God is SO back”. This apparently new popularity of Christianity is emerging in a broader context in which far-right, racist, anti-gender, pro-natalist and Christian-nationalist politics are resurgent. It is also a historical conjuncture in which perplexing new political “mash-ups” are taking shape in the “digital mirror-world” (Banet-Weiser and Kay 2025). This paper focuses on one particular “mash-up” phenomenon: “reactionary feminism”, also sometimes known as “sex realist feminism”. I specifically analyse how reactionary feminist influencers mobilise particular discourses of Christianity. They claim, through high-profile podcast appearances, social media posts, and online articles, that heterosexual Christian marriage offers the best possible social protections for women, and is therefore “feminist”. I argue that grasping the perplexing politics of reactionary feminism and “cultural Christianity” - and the ways in which Christian faith is increasingly mobilised in popular digital culture more broadly - is crucial for understanding the contemporary operations of reactionary politics in the UK.

Bio
Jilly Boyce Kay is a scholar of feminist media and cultural studies. She has published widely on feminism and popular media, including her book Gender, Media and Voice. Recently she has published on feminism and anger, “reactionary feminism”, and the “femosphere”. She is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at Loughborough University, and co-editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies. She is also co-investigator on the project ‘Reality television, working practices and duties of care’.