Postgraduate Study

I’m Dawid Sosin. Since childhood, I’ve a firm interest in film and the moving image. Eventually, my passion has led to doctoral research in genre and film studies. In my reception study of the post classical Hollywood action film hybrids, I address the major forces shaping the state of socio-cultural discourses at different times in history and examine the relevant genre discourses prevailing in both the generic industrial approaches to filmmaking templates as well as the understanding and recognition of genre cues and genre functions across audiences.

My PhD project focuses on the digital feminist activism performed by female extreme metal vocalists. This research draws upon feminist accounts of affect and the theory of networked affect to theorise how women in extreme metal are affected by being able to express their feminist politics online. Given the high levels of misogyny within the extreme metal scene and the dismissal of feminism from both fans and musicians, female extreme metal vocalists are attempting to establish their feminism in a tense context that often positions female vocalists as tokenistic. Alongside the sexism female extreme metal vocalists face, the intersectional factors which shape each woman’s experience are further obstacles to their access to extreme metal as musicians. To capture this phenomenon, this research is being conducted through an intersectional framework to highlight how intersectional factors impact the degree to which women feel able to express their feminist politics within extreme metal and online. My thesis addresses the gap in academia that is yet to illustrate how the rise of fourth wave feminism, in combination with the conventions of extreme metal music, has allowed women in extreme metal to incorporate feminism into their work.

My research is centred around the Twilight fan community and studies of fan activism.

The fans of Twilight repeatedly hold their own fundraising events within their online community for various causes. One of the key causes that the community raises money for is the Quileute Tribe's 'Move to Higher Ground' campaign. These fans campaign to raise money through auctioning off their own products, merchandise, and replicas, with the proceeds directly going to the Native American Quileute Tribe. The way in which these fans actively campaign is interesting because the Quileute Tribe has not asked fans for help, and they have received no funding themselves from the Twilight franchise which can be seen to appropriate their native heritage within the novels and movie adaptations. 

This research hopes to investigate the ways in which Twilight fans partake in a new form of fan activism, titled ‘fan-initiated’, exploring how this concept is vital to understanding fan participation and productivity.