糖心TV

I joined 糖心TV in 2014 with a specialism in transnational Euro-American screen studies.

Research

My primary research is in contemporary film and media history and theory and is tied together by a focus on cultural and especially gender identities, notably in their relation to aesthetics and in popular and/or transnational modes.

After completing a BA in Modern Languages I worked for six years in film development and production, before writing a PhD thesis examining filmed romantic comedy's phenomenal recent proliferation in France from a cultural studies perspective, was shortlisted for The British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies' (BAFTSS) Best Monograph Prize. I concurrently co-edited in today's increasingly globalised age.

More recently, alongside maintaining my expertise in cultural approaches to European audiovisual production, I have co-edited that won the BAFTSS Best Edited Collection Prize (2019). Meanwhile, I have completed the related Heightened Genre and Women's Filmmaking in Hollywood: the Rise of the Cine-fille (2021) and am now a member of the research consortium FEMME constituted of 15 scholars in British, French and US-American film and television studies, from six European universities (Le Mans U., Toulouse Jean Jaur猫s U., U. Paul-Val茅ry Montpellier, Exeter U., Balearic Islands U., 糖心TV U.), and one private partner (Les ateliers du f茅minisme populaire). The project鈥檚 main ambitions are to stimulate research on women in the film and television industries and to dialogue with industry players themselves in order to further the cause of gender equality.

I have recently completed an AHRC Networking Grant as Principal Investigator on the project 'Producing the Post-National Popular: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series', whose key intervention was to take French production as emblematic of major expansions in the transnational circulation of audiovisual culture across even linguistic borders in the contemporary moment, drawing out the implications of this change for representations and cross-cultural perceptions and dialogue. It has led to me advising global media companies on diversity through consultancy company MTM and to a that received an Honourable Mention in the BAFTSS Best Edited Collection Awards for 2025.

In March 2018 I was awarded a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award to fund a series of events on the theme of 'Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture'. In collaboration with Diane Negra and Suzanne Leonard, I have co-edited a deriving from the project with a trans-global and trans-media focus, which won a Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association Outstanding Achievement Award (Edited Collection of the Year, 2022).

My various strands of contemporary work thus take in gender and sexuality studies (especially transnational and comparative); questions of embodied address, performance and celebrity; and issues of media technologically-constructed 'posthuman' identity, which will be the focus of my next monograph.

I am Co-Chief General Editor of French Screen Studies (with Ginette Vincendeau). I also sit on the board of MAI Feminism and am a member of the European Science Foundation's College of Expert Reviewers.

Visiting Appointments and Speaking Invitations

As well as having held a visiting scholarship at MIT and visiting lectureships at Brandeis University (Boston, MA) and Masaryk University (Czech Republic), I have presented by invitation widely at academic institutions including among others the Universities of Oxford, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Gdansk, Giessen and Pittsburgh, King's College London, the Sorbonne, and the University of Maryland, where I delivered the William Falls Memorial lecture during my research stay. I have also spoken at various cultural institutions such as the MIT Museum (Boston), the London Cinema Museum and (regularly) both the Institut Fran莽ais and the British Film Institute (BFI). I regularly contribute to news and cultural media outlets including the BBC, France 24, ABC News, TRT World, Reuters, Sight and Sound and various newspapers and sites.

Teaching and Supervision

I specialise in teaching media and society and am responsible for the final-year modules and Gender and Representation in French Media since 1970, as well as sometimes the second-year module French Cinema from the First to the Second World War. I have taught at MA level on various courses (e.g. History and Film and running specialised modules: French Gender Studies, Genre in French Film History and Female Homosociality and Homoeroticism in Postfeminist French Cinema).

In addition, I have historically taught a second-year module in Hispanic Studies on Contemporary Spanish Cinema and more recently taught on the cross-language modules Mediterranean Cinema and .

In 2016-17 as Visiting Lecturer at Brandeis University, I taught modules on Introduction to the Moving Image and Genre Films in Cinema and Television (taught using only women directors).

I have experience supervising doctoral theses on transnational screen horror; French multiracial film comedy; women's authorship in genre cinema; one-parent families in contemporary French cinema; transnational screen adaptations from China to the Anglophone world; and lesbian representation in Hollywood and French cinema. I am interested in supervising projects on a range of topics in contemporary (especially European, US, Hispanic or trans/postnational) film and media, emphasising popular modes and/or cultural and gender studies.

Publications

Monographs

Heightened Genre and Women's Filmmaking in Hollywood: the Rise of the Cine-fille, Palgrave Macmillan (2021).

From France with Love: Gender and Identity in French Romantic Comedy, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury (2015). Shortlisted for the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Monograph 2017.

Co-edited volumes

M. Harrod and G. Vincendeau. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agn猫s Varda, Bloomsbury (forthcoming 2026).

S. Bell, M. Harrod and A. Phillips. French Cinema: Stardom, Gender and Popular Film. Essays in Celebration of Ginette Vincendeau, Legenda (2026).

M. Harrod and R. Moine, Is it French? Popular Postnational Screen Fiction from France, Palgrave Macmillan (2024). Open Access. Awarded Honourable Mention in British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Edited Collection Prize 2025.

M. Harrod, S. Leonard and D. Negra (eds), Imagining 'We' in the Age of 'I': Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture, Routledge (2021). WINNER of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Outstanding Achievement Award (Edited Collection of the Year, 2022).

M. Harrod and K. Paszkiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017). Nominated for the Kraszna-Krausz Best Moving Image Book Award 2018 and WINNER of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Edited Collection Prize for 2019.

M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury (2015).

Journal Special Issues

M. Harrod and G. Vincendeau (eds), 'French Screen Studies Twentieth-Anniversary Conference: continuity, change, perspectives,' French Screen Studies vol. 24, no. 4 (2024).

M. Harrod and R. Moine (eds), 鈥楪lobal Gallicisms: the postnational popular in francophone European film and television since 2010,鈥� French Screen Studies vol. 24, no. 2 (2024).

M. Harrod and P. Powrie (eds), 鈥楴ew directions in contemporary French comedies,鈥� Studies in French Cinema vol. 18, no.1 (2018).

Journal Articles

• 'Heightened genre and women鈥檚 filmmaking in Hollywood: Embodying history in Detroit (Kathryn Bigelow, 2017).' Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics vol. 10, no. 1, Article 10. (written article and video essay). Open Access.
• 'Prosthetic Identity in the Girls-Gone-Bad Film: the Case of Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring.' Visual Culture Studies 8 (2024), Special Issue on 'Wearable Media' (ed. Barbara Grespi and Maria Teresa Soldani), pp. 43-72.
• M. Harrod and G. Vincendeau, 'De Studies in French Cinema 脿 French Screen Studies, trajectoire d'une revue.' 脡肠谤补苍蝉 2024–1, n潞 21 (2024), pp. 25-35.
• M. Harrod and G. Vincendeau, 'French Screen Studies Twentieth-Anniversary Conference: Continuity, Change, Perspectives,' French Screen Studies vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 328-334 (2024). . Open Access.
• 'Out of time: Fantasising the French romantic hero in the Netflix era,' French Screen Studies vol. 24, no. 2 (2024) . Open Access.
• M. Harrod and R. Moine, 'Global Gallicisms: the postnational popular in francophone European film and television since 2010,鈥� French Screen Studies vol. 24, no. 2 (2024), pp. 194-217. . Open Access.

• 鈥楽taging the generic self: C茅line Sciamma鈥檚 autofictional praxis,鈥� French Screen Studies vol. 23, no. ii-iii (2023), pp. 212-230. . Open Access.

• 鈥楴ostalgia, Melancholy, Trauma: Backlash Postfeminism in Contemporary French Cinematic Romance,鈥� Nottingham French Studies vol. 61, no. 3 (2022), Special Issue on French Postfeminism, pp. 208–226.

• 鈥楾丑别 鈥淪elfish鈥� Mothers of Contemporary French Screen Comedy,鈥� Genre en s茅ries, cin茅ma, t茅l茅vision, m茅dias no. 12-13 (2022), Special Issue on Gender and Comedy: Stars, Performances, Characters. Open Access.

• 'Heightened Genre and Women鈥檚 Filmmaking in Hollywood: Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) as Teen Gothic,' Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics vol. 6, no. 2 (2022). (written article and video essay). Open Access.
• 'Channelling globalism: Canal+ as Transnational French Genre Film Producer,' Contemporary French Civilization vol. 6, no. 3 (2021) Special Issue on 'Canal + and Contemporary French Cinema and Television,' (eds. Christopher Meir and Raymond Kuhn), pp. 285-307.
• 鈥楩rom Postnational Mobility to Posthuman Fluidity: Unfixed Identities and Social Responsibilities in Personal Shopper (Assayas 2016) and Happy End (Haneke 2017),鈥� Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook no. 18 (2020), Special Issue on 'Europe at the Crossroads: Cinematic Takes' (ed. Temenuga Trifonova), pp. 85–101.
• 鈥樷�淢oney Can't Buy Me Love鈥�: Radical Right-wing Populism in French Romantic Comedies of the 2010s,鈥� New Review of Film and Television Studies, Special Issue on 鈥楻adical Romantic Comedy', vol. 18, no. 1 (January 2020) (ed. Maria San Fiippo), pp. 101-118.
• M. Harrod and P. Powrie, 鈥楴ew directions in contemporary French comedies: From nation, sex and class to ethnicity, community and the vagaries of the postmodern,鈥� Studies in French Cinema vol. 18, no.1 (2018), pp. 1-17.
• 鈥楽weet Nothings? Imagining the Inexpressible in Contemporary French Romantic Comedy,鈥� Studies in French Cinema, vol. 13, no. 2 (2013), pp.171-187. Winner of the 2013 Susan Hayward Prize.
• 鈥楾丑别 搁茅补濒颈蝉补迟谤颈肠别 and the Rom-Com in the 2000s,鈥� Studies in French Cinema vol. 12, no. 3 (2012), Special Issue on 鈥榃omen鈥檚 Filmmaking in the 2000s,鈥� (ed. Carrie Tarr), pp.227-240.
• 鈥楲inguistic Difference as Ontological Sameness in Bienvenue chez les Ch鈥檛is (Boon 2008),鈥� Studies in French Cinema vol. 12, no. 1 (2012), pp.75-86. Winner of the 2012 Susan Hayward Prize.
• 鈥�The Aesthetics of Pastiche in the Work of Richard Linklater,鈥� Screen vol. 51, no.1 (2010), pp.21-37.

Book Chapters

• 'Laure Calamy: An Imperfect French Star?' in S. Bell, M. Harrod and A. Phillips. French Cinema: Stardom, Gender and Popular Film. Essays in Celebration of Ginette Vincendeau, Legenda (2026), pp. 153-167.
• With S. Bell and A. Phillips, 'Ginette Vincendeau: Scholar, Teacher, and Feminist,' in S. Bell, M. Harrod and A. Phillips. French Cinema: Stardom, Gender and Popular Film. Essays in Celebration of Ginette Vincendeau, Legenda (2026), pp. 1-9.

• With R. Moine, 鈥業ntroduction: The Expanding Imagination of Mainstream French Films and Television Series,鈥� in M. Harrod and R. Moine (eds), Postnational Frenchness in Mainstream Film and Television, Palgrave (2024), pp. 1-39.

• 鈥樷�淔rom ImpersoNation to ImPosture: (Sub)urban Fantasy in Fanny Herrero鈥檚 Dix pour cent and 顿谤么濒别,鈥� in M. Harrod and R. Moine (eds), Postnational Frenchness in Film and Television, Palgrave (2024), pp. 40-70.

• With R. Goodall, 鈥楴etflix Original Films and European Auteur Cinema: 鈥淯niversal鈥� Particularities in Alexandre Aja鈥檚 Oxygen (Netflix 2021),鈥� in C. Meir and R. Smits (eds), European Cinema in the Streaming Era, Palgrave (2024), pp. 281-299.

• 鈥楾丑别 Unbearable Weight of Gendered Genre: Richard Linklater鈥檚 post-Boyhood Masculinities,鈥� in K. Wilkins and T. Vermeulen (eds.), Refocus: The Films of Richard Linklater, Edinburgh University Press (2023), pp. 115-135.

• With S. Leonard and D. Negra, 'Introduction: Romance and social bonding in contemporary culture - before and after COVID-19,' in M. Harrod, S. Leonard and D. Negra (eds), Imagining 'We' in the Age of 'I': Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture, Routledge (2021), pp. 1-28.

• 鈥樷�淢oney Can't Buy Me Love": Radical Right-wing Populism in French Romantic Comedies of the 2010s,鈥� in M. San Filippo (ed.), After 鈥楬appily Ever After鈥�, Wayne State University Press (2021), pp. 197-216.

• 'Parisian Lovers in the Contemporary Romcom,' in A. Phillips and G. Vincendeau (eds), Paris in the Cinema - Beyond the Fl芒neur, Palgrave (2017), pp. 156-166.
• 鈥楾丑别 Myth of Lena Dunham,鈥� in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 179-197.
• With K. Paszkiewicz, 鈥業ntroduction: Women's Authorship and Genre in Contemporary Film and Television,鈥� in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 1-20.
• 鈥楥inephilia as Multilingualism in The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011) and Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012),鈥� in T. Mamula and L. Patti (eds), The Multilingual Screen, Bloomsbury (2016), pp. 69-89.
• 鈥樷�淎s If a Girl鈥檚 Reach Should Exceed Her Grasp鈥�: Gendering Genericity and Spectatorial Address in the Work of Amy Heckerling,鈥� in F. Smith and T. Shary (eds), Refocus on the Films of Amy Heckerling, Edinburgh University Press (2016), pp. 53-72.
• 鈥楪irlfriends, Postfeminism and the European Chick-Flick in France,鈥� in F. Handyside and K. Taylor (eds), International Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Contexts, Palgrave Macmillan (2015), pp.35-49.
• 鈥楧ani猫le Thompson: French Women鈥檚 Screenwriting Goes Global,鈥� in J. Selbo and J. Nelmes (eds), Women Screenwriters: An International Guide, Palgrave Macmillan (2015), pp. 346-351.

• 鈥楩谤补苍驳濒补颈蝉, Anglais and Contemporary French Comedy,鈥� in M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris (2015), pp. 145-158.
• With M. Liz and A. Timoshkina, 'The Europeanness of European Cinema: An Overview,鈥� in M. Harrod, M. Liz and A. Timoshkina (eds), The Europeanness of European Cinema: Identity, Meaning, Globalization, I.B. Tauris (2015), pp.1-13.
• 鈥楢uteur Meets Genre: Rohmer and the Rom-Com,鈥� in L. Anderst (ed.), The Films of Eric Rohmer: French New Wave to Old Master, Palgrave Macmillan (2014), pp.101-113.

• Three entries, Directory of World Cinema: France, T. Palmer and C. Michael (eds), Intellect (2013).

Book Reviews and Review Articles

• 'Plus 莽a change鈥�Genres of masculinity in transnational film history.' French Screen Studies (OA).
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: Transnational and Transmedia Stardom by Felicity Chaplin, French Studies vol. 76, no. 2 (April 2022), Pages 311–312,
• Middlebrow Cinema by Sally Faulkner (ed.), New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film
  Vol.17, No. 1 (2020): 122-125.
• The Nasty Woman and the Neo Femme Fatale in Contemporary Cinema by Agnieszka Piotrowska, Film-Philosophy no. 24 (2020): 250-253.
• Nancy Meyers by Deborah Jermyn, Feminist Media Studies, no. 2 (February 2018): 329-330.
• French Cinema in Close-Up by Michael Abecassis with M. Block (eds), Studies in European Cinema vol. 13 (August 2016)
• Nationalism and the Cinema in France: Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995 by Hugo Frey, French History vol. 30, no. 2 (2016): 282-283.

• French Comedy on Screen: A Cinematic History by R茅mi Fournier-Lanzoni, French Studies vol. 69, no. 4 (2015): 573-574.
• Je t鈥檃ime...moi non plus: Franco-British Cinematic Relations by L. Mazdon and C. Wheatley (eds), Screening the Past no. 33 (April 2012).
• Richard Linklater by David T. Johnson, Senses of Cinema no. 64 (September 2012)

Translation

• Translation from French of 鈥楢n Industry Perspective on Dix pour cent and Ten Percent,鈥� (interview with producers Harold Valentin and Christian Baute), in M. Harrod and R. Moine (eds), Is it French? Popular Postnational Screen Fiction from France, Palgrave Macmillan (2024) , pp. 275-291.
• Translation from Spanish (with K. Paszkiewicz) of Barbara Zecchi鈥檚 鈥楥omedy as a Feminist Strategy: Spanish Women Filmmakers Reclaim Laughter,鈥� in M. Harrod and K. Paskiewicz (eds), Women Do Genre in Film and Television, Routledge (2017), pp. 91-105.

Media, Public Engagement and Non-Traditional Academia

Full list available here.

Background and Formal Qualifications

BA (Oxford [Magdalen College], French and Spanish); MA and PhD (King's College London, Film Studies). After my PhD, I taught at King's College and at the London School of Economics and Political Science's Gender Institute, before joining 糖心TV in 2014. I have also completed 糖心TV's PCAPP qualification (Postgraduate Certificate in Academic and Professional Practice) and am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Administrative Roles

I am Head of French. I have historically been in charge of social media for the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as Chair of Examinations for French Studies and for the School of Modern Languages (intermediate year).