Dr Fiona Handyside
Associate Professor
Film
I grew up in Paignton, Devon, and was educated at the Universities of Southampton, Nottingham, Strasbourg and London. I also worked for a year as a Lectrice at Universite Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux. I was appointed as a Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen's University Belfast in 2002, and returned to my home roots to work as a Lecturer in Film Studies at Exeter in 2007. I was promoted to Associate Professor in January 2019.
My recent book publications are:
- Girls' Hairstories: Resilience and Sparkle in Contemporary Screen Cultures (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)
- Sofia Coppola: A Cinema of Girlhood (I.B. Tauris, 2017)
- Cinema at the Shore: The Beach in French Film (Peter Lang, 2014, reissued 2023).
- International Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Contexts co-edited with Kate Taylor-Jones (Palgrave, 2015)
- Eric Rohmer: Interviews (University of Mississippi Press, 2013). This appeared in Korean translation in 2017, translated by RHEE Soue-won.
In 2018-2019, I was awarded a Leverhulme International Academic Fellowship and carried out research and teaching at Le Mans Universite, France. I continued to work closely with colleagues in France and I am now a member of the research consortium FEMME Female Filmmakers and Feminism in the Media | ANR, constituted of 15 scholars in British, French and US-American film and television studies, from six European universities (Le Mans U., Toulouse Jean Jaurès U., U. Paul-Valéry Montpellier, Exeter U., Balearic Islands U., Warwick U.), and one private partner (Les ateliers du féminisme populaire). The project’s main ambitions are to stimulate research on women in the film and television industries and to dialogue with industry players themselves in order to further the cause of gender equality.
I am currently Director of Education and Student Experience for the department of Communication, Drama and Film. I enjoy thinking of innovative approaches to the study of how film and allied media represent our world to us and working alongside my colleague Dr Benedict Morrison have recently established a pioneering module in partnership with The Donkey Sanctuary on the representation of donkeys on screen and the treatment and care of donkeys working in the film industry. You can watch a video about this here:
My office is 110 Queens.
Please email me for an appointment.
