Dr Antonia Mackay

Senior Lecturer in Publishing and MA Journalism Subject Coordinator

School of Arts

Role

I am a Senior Lecturer in Publishing with Oxford International Centre for Publishing. Before undertaking an academic career, I worked in the creative industries, working for Vogue magazine, and GQ, as well as for PR clients Calvin Klein and Twenty8Twelve.

Prior to joining the Media, Journalism and Publishing program, I was Teaching Fellow in English Literature at Oxford Brookes, and Visiting Lecturer in American Theatre at Goldsmiths, London. 

My research interests are interdisciplinary. I work across American Literature and Culture, Media Studies, Screen Studies, Surveillance Studies and Feminist Corporeality, but tend to focus these areas around spatial studies and geographical humanities. In 2013 I completed my PhD in postwar American Literature and Culture and the formation of identity in urban, suburban and pastoral spaces. 

Teaching and supervision

Modules taught

  • Research and Data Analysis
  • Journalism and Popular Culture
  • Dissertation and Major Project
  • Death of the Author
  • Creative Entrepreneurship
  • Magazine Publishing
  • Media Law and Ethics
  • History and Culture of Publishing 

Supervision

I am currently supervising postdoctoral students working on postcolonial readings of the Longman book series from the 1970s, and women's writing.

Research

My doctoral thesis explored the impact of spatial setting (geographical, built and architectural) on the formation of identity (specifically, gendered and racial) during the Cold War in America. This research utilised a multi-disciplinary methodology working with 20th century history, cultural studies, feminist theory and urban studies, and engaged with film, television, magazines, and literature. 

I am currently working on two research projects - a monograph on surveillance, race, gender and the body, examining the role of AI and technology in shaping our contemporary culture; and an interdisciplinary project on maternal healthcare and the screen during the pandemic.  The latter works with a range of specialists from medical backgrounds such as those in the NHS, psychiatry and midwifery, as well as academics in the humanities and social sciences. 

 

Research Networks

Member of the university-wide research cluster, Space and Temporalities, and Creative Industries research Networks. 

Public Engagement

Think Human Festival 2020  

Creative Industries Festival 2021 

Centres and institutes

Groups

Publications

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Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

  • Gender Network Committee Member
  • British Association of American Studies (BAAS)
  • Irish Association of American Studies (IAAS)
  • Culture of the Suburbs
  • Society for History of Women in the Americas (SHAW)

Conferences

Conference Organization and Panel Chairing:

  • Irish Association of American Studies 
  • Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Conference (MeCCSA)
  • British Association of American Studies
  • Anglo American History Conference
  • Irish Association of American Studies 
  • Imagining the Suburbs 
  • Mapping the Self 
  • Modernism and Magazines

 

Selected Conference Presentations:

  • “Stranger Things in Strange Times: Surveillance, Nostalgia and Contemporary American politics” at BAAS, University of Sussex, April 2019
  • “Cops and Incarceration: Constructing Racial Narratives in Reality TV’s Prisons” at IAAS, University College Dublin, April 2018
  • “Hyperreal Spaces and the Mythical Male in the West”, IHR, Gender and the Americas Series, University of London, April 2016
  • “Cyborgs, Selves and Subjectivity in San Francisco”, IAAS, Trinity College Dublin, April 2015
  • “Simulacra and Selves in Suburbia” at BAAS, University of Birmingham, April 2014
  • “Simulacra and Selves in Suburbia” at Cultures of the Suburbs Conference, Exeter University, June 2014
  • “The Influence of Architecture in Cold War Suburbia”, at Gender in the Americas, IHR, London University, November 2013 (podcast available on iTunes)