Oliver Wilson, a former MMLL undergraduate and MPhil student in ELAC has won an essay competition run by the journal French Screen Studies.  The essay, “A Waste of Space: Queer Relationalities and Abject Materialities in Claire Denis’s High Life and Julia Ducournau’s Titane” was described by the panel who oversaw the 2023 award as “theoretically highly ambitious but also assured”. He was commended for his exemplary interweaving of theory and close reading in a way that “buil[t] throughout to an impressive conclusion.”

Dr Jules O’Dwyer, who supervised the essay for a Master’s module titled “Spaces of Queer Cinema”, adds: “In this ambitious and beautifully-written essay, Olly orchestrated a multileveled argument that will be of great interest to fellow scholars and students with interests in posthumanism, queer theory, and French film studies.”