Dr Antonia Mackay

BA Hons, MA, PhD, FHEA

Senior Lecturer in Publishing and Subject Coordinator for Media Journalism and Publishing

School of Arts

Role

I am a Senior Lecturer in Publishing with Oxford International Centre for Publishing. Before undertaking a PhD and academic career, I worked in the creative industries, working for Vogue magazine, and GQ, as well as for local fashion enterprises such as Oxford Fashion Week, and international clients Calvin Klein and Twenty8Twelve.

Prior to joining the Media, Journalism and Publishing program, I held other roles at Oxford Brookes including Associate Lecturer in Fine Art and Teaching Fellow in English Literature, as well as Visiting Lecturer in American Theatre at Goldsmiths, London. 

My research interests are highly 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 and digital humanities. In 2013 I completed my PhD in postwar American Literature and Culture and the formation of identity in urban, suburban and pastoral spaces. 

I am the Subject Coordinator for Media Journalism and Publishing, and manage the undergraduate programme as well as oversee the department's research as Research Coordinator. 

Teaching and supervision

Modules taught

  • Creative Industries 
  • Fashion Journalism
  • Research and Data Analysis
  • Journalism and Popular Culture
  • Dissertation and Major Project
  • Creative Entrepreneurship
  • PG Dissertation modules (MA Journalism)
  • PG Cultures of EDI (MA Publishing)
My teaching interests lie somewhere between print and the digital and I often work across programmes offering expertise in the application of theory to industry, and vice versa. My teaching most recently focuses on supporting all aspects of research, developing from UG through to PG levels, allowing students a consistency of methodological and theoretical support, from Level 4 up to Level 7. 

Supervision

I am currently supervising postdoctoral students working on postcolonial readings of the Longman book series from the 1970s, and women's writing, and welcome students looking for supevision on projects in Digital Humanities, STEAM related projects and research related to surveillance, spatial theory and gendered corporeality. 

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 a large interdisciplinary research project exploring the effects of Covid-19 on the digitisation of maternal healthcare for new mothers. The project, supported by funds from Research Excellence Awards, Impact Development Awards and external grants from Sheila Kitzinger Programme at Green Templeton, Oxford University, works with a range of specialists from medical backgrounds in the NHS, Psychiatry and Midwifery, to create a new digital support system for first-time mums. Outputs from this project include a play (Three M'others) shown at the North Wall Arts Centre in May 2024; an interdisciplinary edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan (due for publication in 2026) and a monograph on the role of surveillance in the contemporary culture of motherhood. 

Research Networks

Steering Committee Member of Creative Industries Research Network and Children and Young People
Member of Space and Temporalities, CoRA and EDIN

Public Engagement

Think Human Festival 2020 and 2024
Science Bazaar, 2023 and 2024
Creative Industries Festival 2021, 2023 and 2024
Three M'others play at North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford 2024

Centres and institutes

Groups

Publications

slide 1 of 6

Professional information

Memberships of professional bodies

 
  • 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)