Dr Clara Bradbury-Rance

Clara Bradbury-Rance is a Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Liberal Arts at King's College London. She holds a BA in Film Studies and an MRes in Sexuality and Gender Studies from the University of Exeter and a PhD in Screen Studies from the University of Manchester. Before joining the interdisciplinary Liberal Arts programme at King’s in 2017, she taught at various UK universities across the fields of film, media, literature, gender and cultural studies.

Research Interests 

Clara is the author of Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory, which was published by Edinburgh University Press and translated into Spanish by Osífragos (both 2019). Analysing contemporary films in the context of long-standing theoretical debates and representational paradigms, the book addresses questions of sexual fluidity, visibility and/as progress, LGBTQ+ identity politics and queer approaches to the tensions among spectatorship, desire, identification and identity.

Clara has published widely on feminist and queer film and media, including essays on feminist citational practice, Netflix and queer taste, cinephilia, queer adolescence, adaptation, postfeminism, the lesbian sex scene and the work of filmmakers such as Dee Rees, Lisa Cholodenko and Céline Sciamma. In 2020, she edited a special issue on the theme of feminist pedagogies. She is currently beginning on a new book project on ambivalence, masculinity and queer and trans representability.

Clara’s academic work has appeared in the journals Camera Obscura, French Screen Studies, Feminist Media Studies, MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, Feminist Pedagogy, Feminist Theory and the New Review of Film and Television Studies. Her film reviews and criticism are regularly published by CineVue, Club des Femmes and Sight and Sound magazine.

Teaching

Clara teaches on the BA Liberal Arts and MA Global Cultures programmes at King's and her module Queer and Trans Screen Cultures is open to students from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She was recently awarded senior fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Expertise and Public Engagement

Clara has been invited to speak on her research at the Universities of Warwick, St Andrews, Essex, LSE, Stirling, UCL, Queen Mary and Westminster (UK), Leuphana (Germany), Gothenburg (Sweden), Monash (Australia), Michigan and Mount Holyoke (USA), Le Mans and Sciences Po (France) and the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the Facultad de Cine (Mexico). In February-March 2023, she will be a visiting fellow of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) at the University of Sydney and part of the faculty of the inaugural Hunt-Simes Institute in Sexuality Studies.

Clara is on the boards of the research centre Queer@King's, the journal MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, and the Edinburgh University Press book series Screening Sex. She is currently Senior Co-Chair of the Queer and Trans Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Clara has collaborated with UK organisations including the British Film Institute, the Rio, the London Feminist Film Festival, BFI Flare, Critical Sexology, ParaPride, POUTfest, Screen 25, Arrow Films, StudioCanal, the Barbican, Club des Femmes, Curzon Soho, the LGBT Foundation, Queer Contact Festival and HOME. International collaborations include the China Women's Film Festival and MIC Género and the Cineteca Nacional (Mexico).

For fully up-to-date publications, news and events, visit clarabradburyrance.com