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Reposted by 🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible

Melanie Williams @britfilmmelanie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Excited to be keynote speaker for this essential biennial conference where all the feminist media historians gather!

🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

#CFP 'Doing Women's Screen and Media Histories 8' #DWSMH8 16-18 June 2027, Exeter. We are hosting in collaboration with @wfthn.bsky.social 'Archiving & Curating Women's Media Histories' Confirmed Keynote @britfilmmelanie.bsky.social Full details 👇 womensscreenwork.exeter.ac.uk/events/confe...

womensscreenwork.exeter.ac.uk

Doing Women’s Screen & Media History Conference 2027 – Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This is wonderful, we are so lucky to work closely with the Tina Gharavi collection, we have already learned so much about the creative and collaborative processes of filmmaking by looking at her papers #womensscreenworkinarchives #TinaGharavi #womenfilmmakers #femfilmhist

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Pictured is a shot of a small (yet still unwieldy!) sample of the Rank Scripts collection in the @bdcmuseum.bsky.social, the front page of the script from Hazel Adair’s ‘The House at World’s End’, and a photograph of Hazel Adair used in my presentation." (6/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

and to learn about such a wealth of underrepresented, undervalued and under-thought screen work by women. It was really heartening to be surrounded by so many scholars interested in media studies’ role in preserving and shaping women’s labour histories. (5/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I used this case study to explore how attention to unmade or unfinished script work can enrich, and complicate, feminist media histories. It was marvellous to be on a panel with Lucas Martins Néia and Pim Verhulst, (4/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

My talk showcased research on Hazel Adair's screenwriting, investigating her wonderfully bizarre career trajectory alongside and through close analysis of an unrealised script from the Rank Scripts Collection at the @bdcmuseum.bsky.social. (3/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I shared some early findings from my work as Postdoctoral Researcher in Curation on the AHRC-funded “Women’s Screen Work in the Archives Made Visible” project (womensscreenwork.exeter.ac.uk). (2/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Postdoctoral Researcher Katie Crosson writes: "Many thanks to International Women's Broadcasting Histories for hosting me to talk at their inaugural conference, held at the @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social and online. (1/7)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

These methods help open up the archive, allowing researchers to see patterns, relationships and histories that might otherwise remain hidden in catalogue records." (8/8) #womensscreenwork #digitalhumanities #archives #feministfilmhistory #screenheritage @dhlabexeter.bsky.social

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

and career chronologies for women filmmakers in order to display and narrate women’s screen work through an open and searchable Omeka S site. (7/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I am also exploring innovative ways to present the data and visualise the insights from the research, this includes collaborating with the team to develop ideas for infographic timelines, geo-tagging for StoryMaps, clusters and networks of activity, (6/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

By building controlled vocabularies, metadata, and other entities that need to connect together, I follow best practices for the oral history records and structure them in line as recommended by the Oral History Society. (5/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

For the Oral Histories resource my work is based on the standard scholarly approaches to archival research, I am building up ontologies using Dublin Core and constructing item records to set up the network links and the different media types through bespoke digital humanities methods. (4/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

on the project, and add value and insights in understanding the collections that the team are working with at the British Film Institute and Bill Douglas Cinema Museum. My work includes the design, build and integration of the items within the Omeka S framework. (3/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

public engagement. My role on the WSWIA project also involves the creation of an Omeka S site - the project's main database for the Oral Histories with archivists, curators and filmmakers, recorded interviews and data visualisations that share the research data that we are collecting (2/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Lucie Mingmei writes: "I am the Research IT Developer in the Research IT team based in the Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Exeter. As part of the WSWIA team, I work on the design and development of the project’s WordPress web interface, which is used for blogging and (1/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

And, what happens when archivists adopt, as Michelle Casswell urges them to, an explicitly feminist standpoint to address these questions? The panellists were then joined in conversation by WSW Co-Lead @bellecobb.bsky.social. (6/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

often-obscured labour of Chadha’s women co-workers without decentring the director and the challenges she’s navigated as a woman of colour? What methodologies need to be developed to make women’s vital contributions to the British film industry visible in institutional archives? (5/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

political concerns and representational strategies. Earlier this week, Jessica developed on this research at a seminar exploring feminist film archives, organised by Dr James Harvey and the University of Hertfordshire’s Heritage Hub. In her talk, Jessica asked how might we foreground the (4/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

There, she focused on the emergent stage of Chadha’s career while demonstrating how, by taking a lateral approach to researching Chadha's collection and spotlighting the labour of her extensive network of women collaborators, we can gauge a better understanding of the director’s evolving (3/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

At the ‘Ranging the Gaps Symposium’ - organised by Lillian Wang and Tillie Quattrone at the University of Manchester last month - she laid out practical strategies for addressing the 'gaps' in filmmakers’ named collections. (2/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

In the past few weeks, postdoctoral researcher, Jessica Boyall has been presenting papers that draw on her experience appraising, arranging and cataloguing Gurinder Chadha’s collection at the British Film Institute's National Archive. (1/6)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

The best part of the WSW project is that I get to work with an incredible team and have such productive conversations. I can’t wait to see how the project develops." (5/4!)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

where I introduced Gharavi's BAFTA nominated film, I Am Nasrine. In July I will speak about Tina Gharavi’s notebooks at the ARLIS Challenging Collections conference. (4/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

own questions, such as how to share untold stories and 'who is allowed to speak?' I have spoken on themes from this project at the BFI’s Women With A Movie Camera Summit for 2025 and 2026, and co-curated the BFI season ‘Beyond the Frame: Women Filmmakers and their Archives’ (3/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I am working closely with postdoctoral researcher Jessica Boyall on two collection case studies exploring questions around how cataloguing practice can enhance the visibility of women in the archive. I am working on the Tina Gharavi Collection, taking an approach that considers Gharavi’s (2/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Wendy Russell writes: "I am the Screencraft Lead Archivist at the British Film Institute, where I look after the (mostly) paper archives of filmmakers. As part of the WSW Archival Strand, (1/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

One of the key things we will be doing is excavating and bringing to the light some fascinating unmade scripts by women screenwriters buried in Burton’s collections." (4/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

and the challenges and opportunities they face in doing that work. I’m also in the process of organising a workshop on women’s unmade screen work at Swansea for June 2026 which will be held in the wonderful Taliesin Create on Swansea University’s Singleton Campus. (3/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Working with Shelley Cobb, we are slowly building an archive of these interviews which will offer a fascinating snapshot of women’s work in acquiring, curating, preserving and making accessible the material histories of women’s screen work – (2/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Lisa Smithstead writes: "My main role on the project is interviewing curators and archivists to find out more about their working methods with women’s screen work collections. (1/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

The material culture we hold at the museum is a valuable record of women’s work, offering an evidence trail that can map the hidden history of women’s work in cinema." (4/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

uncovering the many female writers working in Britain in the mid-20th century. I am also working with Katie on planning the project’s exhibition in the museum in the summer of 2027, and with Linda on editing a book on women’s film history in 10 objects. (3/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

On the Women’s Screenwork project we are using the museum’s collections to create new stories about cinema’s past and women’s contribution to filmmaking. This includes working with Katie and our student volunteers on the Rank Script Collection, (2/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Phil Wickham writes: "I am the Curator of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter. This is the leading museum dedicated to the moving image in the UK and holds over 94,000 items, forming a people’s history of cinema and optical media. (1/4)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Building on the curatorial experience I developed re-centring Play for Today’s female screen workers during my PhD, I aim to exhibit the histories, figures, texts and also absences that the project team are continually discovering. Watch this space!" (8/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

and University of Exeter International Women’s Day 2026 (Picture 3). (7/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I also worked with Helen Hanson to create an interactive timeline of women’s film history, inviting participants to plot some of our archival discoveries on the display. So far, we have taken this to Futures Festival 2025 at the Exeter Phoenix (Picture 2 – Photo Credit: Ben Knight) (6/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

My role involves taking this research to a range of audiences. This has included developing a mermaid-themed workshop on screen work and Betty Box for 9-12 year-olds with PI Helen Hanson and Curatorial Specialist Phil Wickham as part of @beinghumanfest.bsky.social 2025 (Picture 1).

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I will be presenting the initial findings of my case study on Hazel Adair at the Women’s Broadcasting Histories conference at @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social in June. (4/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I’m working on a series of spreadsheets crunching some of the data this wonderfully haphazard collection throws up while looking in-depth at a number of case studies based around particular scripts. (3/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

As the Postdoctoral Researcher in Curation, I am developing methods for visualising and framing women’s screen work in ways that do justice to institutional as well as personal histories of loss, instability, and perseverance. (2/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Katie Crosson writes: "Based at the University of Exeter in the Curation Strand, I am working on a script collection donated to the @bdcmuseum.bsky.social by Pinewood Studios, analysing screenplays written, conceived and developed by women. (1/8)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

From her archive we discussed unmade films that still contribute to her oeuvre and identity as a diasporic Punjabi filmmaker, how to turn Austen into Bollywood, and what it's like to get to dance with her on set!"

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Being in conversation with Gurinder is an exhilarating experience, as she has so much to say to us about what it means to be a diasporic filmmaker and what British cinema is and could be. (4/5)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

'Beyond the Frame: Women Filmmakers and their Archives'. (3/5)

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🗃️ Women’s Screen Work in Archives Made Visible @womensscreenwork.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

and how they understand their own work as central to UK film culture. I am also working with Linda Ruth Williams on interviews with our two main donors - Tina Gharavi and Gurinder Chadha. These photos are from our event with the British Film Institute (2/5)

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