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Beth Pyner
(she/her)
Research student
Overview
I am a postgraduate researcher in Literature and Visual Culture at Cardiff University. My research advances intersectionally feminist approaches to intermediality - the study of the relationship between different forms of media. I focus particularly on intermedial and autobiographical works by women which represent conflict or migration, produced in the twenty-first century. I theorise intermediality as an encounter between or among media, and explore how intermediality stages encounters between or among women and girls in archives of conflict and migration that typically exclude them.
My doctoral project is funded by the Arts and Humanties Research Council via the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. I am jointly supervised by Dr Alix Beeston (primary supervisor, Cardiff University) and Dr Debra Ramsay (secondary supervisor, University of Exeter).
From 2020-2022 I co-chaired "Intersec+ions," a student-led research network exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and other markers of difference in culture and society.
Publication
2023
- Pyner, B. 2023. Don’t let’s look at the nanny: Tracing the photographic occlusion of the black nanny in Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 42(2), pp. 281-311. (10.1353/tsw.2023.a913026)
2020
- Pyner, B. 2020. Instagram: The power of the platform. [Online]. Wales Arts Review. Available at: https://www.walesartsreview.org/instagram-a-symposium-the-power-of-the-platform
Articles
- Pyner, B. 2023. Don’t let’s look at the nanny: Tracing the photographic occlusion of the black nanny in Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 42(2), pp. 281-311. (10.1353/tsw.2023.a913026)
Websites
- Pyner, B. 2020. Instagram: The power of the platform. [Online]. Wales Arts Review. Available at: https://www.walesartsreview.org/instagram-a-symposium-the-power-of-the-platform
Research
Research interests include:
- Gender and feminist studies
- Visual culture studies including photography, film, illustration, and gallery exhibition.
- Critical race theory
- Women's life writing
- Contemporary literature
Thesis
Intermedial Encounters in Women's Contemporary Accounts of Conflict
Interdisciplinary in scope and intersectionally feminist in approach, Beth's doctoral research examines the affordances of intermediality (different forms of media) in representations of encounters between women and girls, as they are framed within women's contemporary memoirs and films about conflict and migration.
An essay derived from this project has been published in Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature.
Funding sources
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.
Biography
I completed my BA in Hispanic Studies with European Studies at Queen Mary, University of London (2012), and my MA in Comparative Literature at Kings College London (2014). After graduating from my master's, I spent several years working in the charity sector and in arts education, including within higher education, where I worked as a project coordinator overseeing EU funded widening participation initiatives in the visual arts. I commenced my PhD in 2019 and am funded by the AHRC via the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.
During my PhD I have taught widely across English Literature modules at multiple levels. My experience includes leading first-year undergraduate seminars, participating in round-table discussions followed by a Q&A for a second-year module, and covering a final-year lecture and seminar.
I am currently in the process of developing a post-PhD project relating to the potentialities of the afterlives of photographic materials and archives, particularly as they exceed and scatter the hierarchies imbued in their original contexts.
Honours and awards
Research fellowships and grants
- AHRC research support grant covering travel to New York, USA to interview artist Diana Markosian, 2023
- AHRC research support grant covering travel to Seattle, USA for the annual conference of the Association of the Study of the Arts of the Present, 2023
- AHRC research support grant covering travel to undertake research at Fotografiska, Stockholm, 2023
- AHRC research training support grant covering travel to the TV PhD Talent Scheme in Edinburgh, UK, 2022
- AHRC research training support grant to undertake a documentary film course at UCL, London, 2021
- AHRC doctoral studentship, 2020
Teaching awards and training
- AFHEA certification awarded in 2023
Other awards
- I won a full bursary to attend Bristol Translates Summer School 2024 at the University of Bristol to support my literary translation work from Spanish to English. Bristol Translates offers the opportunity to work with leading professional translators to translate texts across different literary genres, and to receive training relating to all aspects of professional literary translation.
- I was one of 15 delegates selected for the 2022 TV PhD talent scheme run by Edinburgh TV Festival and the TV Foundation in collaboration with the AHRC. I was one of six finalists to pitch an idea for a TV documentary based on my PhD research at Edinburgh TV Festival, 2022. I currently have a TV documentary, based on this pitch, under development with Lion TV.
- I was selected as a New Voice by the Association for Art History and presented my research at their annual PGR conference in November 2019.
Professional memberships
- Member of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
- Member of British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
- Member of the Modern Language Association
Supervisors
Specialisms
- Visual cultures
- Literary studies
- Feminist studies
- Photography studies
- Film and Television