College: Magdalene

Email: asg56@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Dr Maite Conde

Research Topic: Refashioning Difference: Costume and the Materiality of African and Afro-diasporan Cinemas

About

Alexandra is a Gates Scholar and a PhD candidate in the Centre for Film and Screen Studies. Her interests are situated across disciplines and include postcolonial cinema and geopolitics, filmmaking in Africa and its diasporas, women’s filmmaking, costume studies, cinematic embodiment and material cultures. Her training is in film theory and practice. She hold an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a BA in Film and Media Production from the University of Cape Town.

Research       

Alexandra's doctoral thesis explores costume and material culture in African and Afro-diasporan cinemas, with a particular emphasis on works by women filmmakers and visual artists. This follows on from her MPhil research, which focused on recent work by North African and Lebanese female filmmakers.

Scholarships/Prizes

Magdalene College Graduate Tutor’s Research Fund Grant (2020)

Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages Fieldwork Research Grant (2018)

Gates Cambridge Academic Development Fund Grant (2019)

Gates Cambridge Scholarship (2018)

Cecil Renaud Educational & Charitable Trust Overseas Scholarship (2017)

Johan Berg Historia Award from the Journal of the Historical Association of South Africa (2016)

University of Cape Town Honours Council Bursary (2013 – 2015)

Jane Stadler Book Prize for Media (2013)

Teaching       

In 2021-22, Alexandra will be lecturing and taking seminars on anticolonial cinemas in Africa for IL1: Ibero-American Cinema. Previously, from 2020-21, Alexandra was supervising final-year undergraduate students on the Tripos Part II paper CS6: European film. From 2016-17 at the University of Cape Town, she tutored first-year undergraduate students in the Centre for Film & Media Studies.

Conference papers

2021: ‘Ad(dressing) Time: Costume, Embodiment and the Material Inscription of

Afro-diasporan Experience’, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

2021: ‘Fashioning Empire: Race and the Politics of the Surface in Claire Denis’ Chocolat (1988)’, Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

2019: ‘Framing the Spectral: Corporeality and Mediation in the Early Cinema’, Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference. 

2018: ‘Dancing out of time – an archaeological, inter-generational look at contemporary Maghrebi and Arabic female-directed films’, University of Cambridge Film and Screen Studies Showcase

Publications

‘Fashioning African Screen Worlds: La Noire De… (1966) and Les Saignantes (2005)’, African Screen Worlds, edited collection (in progress), due 2022.

Surface Tensions: Race, Costume, and the Politics of Texture in Claire Denis’ Chocolat

(1988), 2021, Film, Fashion & Consumption, 10(2), in press.

Other activities and roles

Alexandra is a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS).