Joana Jacob Ramalho

Lecturer (Teaching), Faculty of Arts & Humanities, UCL
I am an interdisciplinary scholar working across the fields of screen media, cultural studies, literature and language. My research focuses on the Gothic in its many iterations across media, national contexts and historical moments. I have additional research interests in: Film (esp. classical Hollywood cinema, noir and musicals); alternative entertainment (particularly cabaret, burlesque, circus and 'freak shows'); gender politics in film, television and music; intermediality and generic hybridity; representations of mental illness in fiction; political in/correctness, and radical humour; Victorianism (esp. visual culture and mourning practices); and music (esp. film and stage musicals, and musical moments in non-musical films).

My monograph, Memory and the Gothic Aesthetic in Film (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2024), analyses the Gothic as centrally concerned with memory and informed by the travels of exile and émigré filmmakers.

I have published on haptic motifs and what I call ‘sensory contagion’ in gothic cinema; thing theory and creepy dolls in gothic and horror films; portraits in 1940s psychological thrillers; gender politics in postmillennial gothic musicals; sexsationalist feminism; intermediality and radical humour in the repertoire of British punk cabaret trio The Tiger Lillies; and the queer failure and mock heroism of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. I have presented my work at several international conferences in the UK, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Austria and Portugal and am a peer reviewer for Fantastika Journal and Studies in the Fantastic

I have undertaken UG and MA dissertation supervision in Comparative Literature, Film Studies, Language and Culture (BALC), and Translation Studies on a range of topics including gothic cinema; Francoist cinema; Almada Negreiros; Beyoncé's Lemonade; film and stage musicals; Gothic and Romantic literature and poetry; melancholy (Heimweh) and disenchantment (Entzauberung).

I am currently a joint supervisor to two doctoral candidates working towards a PhD in Creative Critical Writing (with Prof Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen) and a PhD in Geography (with Dr James Kneale).

I welcome proposals for UG, MA and PhD projects that focus on or overlap with any of the research specialisms above.