Dr Alex Bevan

Senior Lecturer

School of Communication and Arts
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
a.bevan@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 68803

Overview

Originally from the States, I've been lecturing at UQ since 2017. I teach Multimedia and Digital Project in the Bachelor of Communications, both of which center on embedding critical perspectives on media into creative and collaborative design and production processes. My research focuses on the relationship among gender, technological change and space. My methodological approaches combine textual analysis (looking at media content) with more industry-facing, hands-on approaches.

The current book projects turn to representations of gender violence in popular media. My second book, Representing Gender Violence in Contemporary Screen Media: Cutting Through the Park, is under contract with Routledge and it studies themes of surveillance technology in representations of stranger rape in television and film. My third book project, Feeling Safe: Gender Harm and Safety DIscourses in Platform Media, studies themes in gender safety discourses across various platforms including safety apps and dating apps.

My first book The Aesthetics of TV Nostalgia (Bloomsbury, 2019) is an industry study of the people designing sets and costumes for nostalgic US television programmes. I address how questions around gender play out on television alongside larger concerns around historical progress and regress that are attached to technological change. You can find my other publications in the areas of television representations of gender, the female body in narratives around nationhood, digital archives, and creative production in Adaptation, Television & New Media, Feminist Media Studies, Cinema Journal, Continuum, Surveillance & Society and Convergence.

Research Interests

  • Gender Studies and Gender Violence
    Media representations of gender and gender violence in popular media
  • Space
    The portrayals of space in media. The entanglement between the design of space and media technology.
  • Media and Cultural Studies
    The history of media technology, platforms, and discourses of technological change

Research Impacts

My research on gender violence addresses one of the most pervasive and systemic of social crises. The binary of domestic violence and stranger violence, as it is constructed in media and platform design, hinders and derails public attention, intervention, and policy. The way violence against women is represented in media tells us repeated stories around what spaces and behaviors are safe, how women's movements should be trackable with technology, and whom is at fault or responsible.

I welcome any industry, NFP, or government collaborations that place gender safety at the center of their remits. I offer skillsets in the areas of gender advoacy, gender education, media and communications anaylsis, brand analysis, multiplatform branding and messaging, and user experience research.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
  • Masters (Coursework), Northwestern University
  • Bachelor of Arts, Yale University

Publications

View all Publications

Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy

  • Doctor Philosophy

  • Doctor Philosophy

View all Supervision

Publications

Book

Book Chapter

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

  • Master Philosophy — Associate Advisor

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor