Michelle Fletcher is Director of the Visual Commentary on Scripture Project. She is a Biblical Scholar who specializes in the New Testament (particularly the book of Revelation), reception criticism, and visual culture. She joined the VCS project in 2017, having previously worked as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Kent.

Michelle is an editor of Bloomsbury Scriptural Traces series and co-host of the Bible & Art Reframed Podcast. She has published widely on the Bible and visual culture and enjoys using a range of critical approaches including film studies, feminist studies, gesture studies, animal studies, and space theory.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• The book of Revelation
• Biblical Reception
• Film Studies
• Visual Art
• Critical Theory

Michelle's research interests revolve around exploring the ideologies imbued in biblical interpretation. She is particularly interested in innovative methodological approaches and those which involve bringing new texts into dialogue with the Bible.
Her current research involves Disaster Movies and the Apocalypse, and gesture in Jesus Films.

Teaching

Biblical Studies, Visual art, Reception History

Selected publications

• ‘Seeing the Word: The Art of Screening Jesus’s Gestures’, Special Issue, Journal of Biblical Interpretation (2026).

• ‘The Visual Commentary on Scripture: Interdisciplinarity in Practice’ with J. Sliwka, in Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Approaches to Biblical Studies, ed. by E. Shively and R. de Sousa (Routledge, 2026), 115–132.

• ‘Who’s Commenting on the Commentators? Imagining a Future for New Testament Commentaries’, The Future of New Testament Studies: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Relevance, ed. by C. Breu (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2026), 141–156.

• ‘Where Are the Animals in the End? Making Sheep Impact on the Apocalypse’, in Animals in the New Testament: Perspectives from Animal Studies and Ancient Contexts, ed. by J. Strong and R. Zimmerman (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2025), 201–218.

• The Future of Revelation and Gender Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 48(2), ed. with O. L. Stewart (2025).

• Companion to the New Testament, ed. with J. Crossley (London: SCM, 2024).

• ‘Revelation’, in Companion to the New Testament, ed. by M. Fletcher and J. Crossley (London: SCM, 2024), pp. 121–140.

• ‘Hebrews’, with Wei Hsien Wan, in Companion to the New Testament, ed. by M. Fletcher and J. Crossley (London: SCM, 2024), 92–106.

• ‘Exodus in Revelation’, in Exodus in the New Testament, ed. by S. Ehorn and S. Whittle (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022), 181–201.

• ‘Seeing Differently with Mary Magdalene’, in The Jesus Film Handbook, ed. R. Walsh (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021), 55–66. 

• ‘Revelation’, in The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries. ed. by J. Schröter, C. Keith, and H. Bond (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), pp. 309–324.

• ‘Apocalypse Noir: The Book of Revelation and Genre’, in T&T Clark Companion to The Bible and Film, ed. by R. Walsh (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018), pp. 21–35.

• Reading Revelation as Pastiche: Imitating the Past (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017). 

• ‘“Behold, I’ll Be Back”: Terminator, the Book of Revelation, and the Power of Sequels’, in Now Showing: Film Theory in Biblical Studies, ed. by C. Vander Stichele and L. Copier, Semeia Studies (Atlanta: SBL Brill, 2016), pp. 105–125.

• ‘Once Upon an Apocalypse: Exodus, Disaster, and a Long, Long Time ago?’, in A New Hollywood Moses: On the Spectacle and Reception of Exodus: Gods and Kings, ed. by D. Tollerton (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), pp. 91–112. 

• ‘How Revelation Defined and Defied a Genre’, in Currents in British Research on the Apocalypse, ed. by G. Allen, I. Paul, and S. Woodman (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), pp. 115–134.

• ‘Flesh for Frankenwhore: Reading Babylon’s Body in Revelation 17’, in The Body in Biblical, Christian and Jewish Texts, ed. by J. E. Taylor (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), pp. 144–64. 

• ‘What Comes into a Woman and What Comes Out of a Woman: Feminist Textual Intervention and Mark 7:14–23’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 30(1) (2014): 25–41.