Jennifer Voss has been researching and teaching at DMU since 2015. In 2022, Jennifer completed her PhD in Drama and Film History; a project funded Midlands 4 Cities in partnership with the AHRC. Jennifer’s doctoral research explored women’s performances of emotion during the transition from silent to sound cinema in Britain and the US. Her work uses close performance analysis alongside archival research to offer an interdisciplinary investigation into acting training practices and women’s experiences of screen acting.
In 2023, Jennifer was awarded funding for a postdoctoral research project titled, 'Scrapbooking Screencraft: Exploring Performativity, Agency, and Women’s Screen Acting in the Archive’. This project explores the British fan-made scrapbooks of 1920s and 1930s film stars held within DMU’s Special Collections, and considers them alongside scrapbooks and ephemera held at a number of national archives. Through the creation of digital, performance-based, and site-specific exhibitions, Jennifer’s work seeks to identify, dissect and examine the performative personas of key screen actresses featured within the scrapbooks.
In addition to her academic research and teaching, Jennifer also has extensive experience working in various roles within a number of university archives, including: DMU Special Collections, Hammer Script Archive, Peter Whitehead Archive, and the Indian Cinema Archive.
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