I am an Associate Professor in Media Audiences and Participatory Cultures, and also hold roles as the Creative Industries Research & Innovation Group Co-Lead and Co-Chair of the Faculty of Business & Creative Industries Ethics Committee.

My research specialisms include media audiences/fans and participatory cultures; material cultures and audiences/fans; and place and space (particularly the experience economy, themed and immersive experiences, and media tourism). I am currently guest editing an issue of Critical Studies in Television focusing on the 40th anniversary of EastEnders in 2025, and working on an edited collection titled Pikachu’s Transmedia Adventures: The Continuing Adaptability of the Pokemon Franchise. My next project is developing a book proposal for a monograph, provisionally titled Spatial Transmedia, Branded Iconography, and Play: Experiencing Universal Studios’ Global Theme Parks and engaging in ongoing research into the experience economy, media tourism, and themed and immersive entertainment.

I have published six books; two monographs, Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality & Participatory Cultures (2020, Amsterdam University Press) and Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity & Self-Narrative (2015, Bloomsbury) and the edited collections Animation Key Films/Filmmakers: The Nightmare Before Christmas (2025, Bloomsbury), A Fan Studies Primer: Method, Ethics Research (2021, University of Iowa Press), Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings & Resurrections in Fan Cultures (2018, University of Iowa Press) and Torchwood Declassified (2013, I.B. Tauris).

I am currently Module Leader for:

• CK1S16 Media, Culture & Creative Industries in Wales 
• CK2S12 Digital & Social Media 
• CK3S21 Transmedia & Convergence Culture

I also teach on:

• CK2S12 Media Audiences & Fandom
• CK3D03 Curation, Exhibition & Events
• BJ2S60 Behind the Sports Headlines

I also supervise students on the module CK3D04 Major Research Project.

I welcome PhD applications from potential PhD students in the areas of media audiences and fandom; media tourism; media experiences; the experience economy; theme parks; Disney Studies; television studies; celebrity studies; digital and social media.

PhD Students:

• Title TBC (2024 -) – Rachel Davies
• ‘Cheap, Quick, and Dirty’: Authorship in the B-Movie Circuit (2024-) – Malu Barroso
• 'Fandom and Play: Auto-Ethnographic research into how forms of roleplay within participatory cultures may be commodified or assist in exercising political awareness in fan spaces' (2022-) - Ada Jeffery
• ‘Cultural Intermediaries and the Presence of Welsh National Identities in Public Celebrity Images’ (2013-2018) – Alex Brady
• 'BBC Television Drama Production in the Nations and Regions’ (2010-2016) – Nina Jones
• 'Spaces of television - Production, site and style’ (2010-2014) – Ben Lamb

Masters by Research in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Students:

• ‘The Force Reawakens: 'The transmedia sub-universe' of internally produced and externally Licenced storytelling in the Disney era of Star Wars’ (2016-2019) – Charlie Andrews

• ‘The Rise of the Cybercelebrity: Understanding Celebrity Production and the Construction of Authenticity on YouTube Using YouTube Gamer MiniLadd’ (2016-2018) – Katherine Edwardes
• ‘'The treasured memories of childhood and television: Intergenerational memory, the home and children's remake television’ (2014-2017) – Laura Jones

• ‘UFO Culture in Wales in the 1970s’ (2013-2015) – Emyr Davies

• ‘Adventures in Time and Facebook: Evolution of Online Doctor Who fandom’ (2012-2013) – Amy Genders
• ‘The Branding of the Consumer Relationship: How the Online Brand Community is Animated by its Fans’ (2010-12) – Emma Leslie