Staff Profile

I have been Professor of French Studies at Newcastle since 2010.

I was Director of the Research Centre for Film & Digital Media from its establishment in 2011 until 2016.

Before coming to Newcastle, I worked in the French Department at the University of Sheffield.

My PhD is from Leeds and my degree from Oxford. 

My hobbies are painting, jogging, and listening to music from the 1970s.

My main research areas are Algerian cinema, Algerian cultures and politics, plus French cinema since the 1960s (especially fantasy genres).

I have recently been Principal Investigator on a major AHRC project called Screening Violence: a Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries, which began in spring 2018 and concluded in autumn 2023. We used film reception as a means to elicit stories of conflict and transition to peace in communities with recent experience of civil conflict, namely: Algeria, Argentina, Colombia, Indonesia and Northern Ireland. The digital follow-on (Refracted Violence, also sponsored by the AHRC) will presents video stories of conflict on an interactive website.

The other investigators on the SV project are Dr Nick Morgan and Dr Philippa Page (Newcastle, SML), Dr Simon Philpott (Newcastle, GPS), Dr Roddy Brett (Bristol) and Professor Brandon Hamber (Ulster). We also work with partner academics and filmmakers in each of the five countries. My colleague Gemma McKinnie (SML) is co-investigator on RV.

• Articles

  • Austin G. Conflict imaginaries in Algeria after the black decade: peace without reconciliation. Modern and Contemporary France 2024. In Press.
  • Austin G, McKinnie G. Affective imaginaries of conflict: from the black decade to the Hirak – an Algerian case study. Contemporary French Civilization 2023, 48(2), 133-151.
  • Austin G, McKinnie G. Fires of resistance in Algerian discourse: A genealogy of a trope. French Cultural Studies 2022, 33(4), 315-327.
  • Austin G. The Stink of the Sacred: a Bataillean reading of Gainsbourg's film Je t'aime moi non plus. French Cultural Studies 2019, 30(1), 34-43.
  • Austin G. Political depression and working practices in recent French cinema. Studies in French Cinema 2015, 15(2), 156-167.
  • Austin G. Decrypting depression in Rivette's Histoire de Marie et Julien. Screen 2014, 55(1), 73-83.
  • Austin G. Biological Dystopias: The Body in Contemporary French Horror Cinema. L'Esprit Createur 2012, 52(2), 99-113.
  • Austin G. Spaces of the Dispossessed in Algerian Cinema. Modern & Contemporary France 2011, 19(2), 195-208.
  • Austin G. Against amnesia: representations of memory in Algerian cinema. Journal of African Cinemas 2010, 2(1), 27-35.
  • Austin G. Drawing trauma: visual testimony in Caché and J'ai 8 ans. Screen 2007, 48(4), 529-536.

• Authored Books

  • Austin G. Algerian National Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
  • Austin G. Contemporary French Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.
  • Austin G. Stars in Modern French Film. London; New York: Arnold; Oxford University Press, 2003.

• Book Chapters

  • Austin G. Trauma in Recent Algerian Documentary Cinema: Stories of Civil Conflict Told by the Living Dead. In: Hodgin N; Thakkar A, ed. Scars and Wounds: Film and Legacies of Trauma. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp.31-52.
  • Austin G. Mohamed Chouikh: from anti-colonial commemoration to a cinema of contestation. In: Gugler, J, ed. Ten Arab Filmmakers. Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press, 2015, pp.166-187. Submitted.
  • Austin G. Contemporary French Horror Cinema: From Absence to Embodied Presence. In: Alistair Fox, Michel Marie, Raphaelle Moine, Hilary Radner, ed. A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema. Oxford, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2015, pp.275-288.
  • Austin G. "Seeing and listening from the site of trauma": The Algerian War in Contemporary French Cinema. In: Austin, J, ed. New Spaces for French and Francophone Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, pp.115-125.

• Edited Books

  • Yu SQ, Austin G, ed. Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
  • Austin G, ed. New Uses of Bourdieu in Film and Media Studies. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016.

• Editorial

  • Austin G, Martin F. Introduction: French and Francophone cinema and contestation. Studies in French Cinema 2013, 13(3), 193-196.