Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies

 

 

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Liz Evans

Professor of Screen Cultures, Faculty of Arts

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Expertise Summary

I am primarily interested in the relationship between screen technology and audience experiences of narrative. My research spans interests in audience and industry studies, with a particular focus on transmedia narratives and innovative forms of storytelling. My first book, Transmedia Television (Routledge, 2011), explored the attitudes, opinions and values of audiences towards the development of the internet and mobile phone as extensions and alternatives to the television set. My second book,Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture (Routledge, 2020) asked audiences and practitioners to define what they mean be 'engagement' with screen content. The book offers a new model for interrogating audience screen experiences and examined how practitioners' perceptions of those experience overlap or differ from audiences themselves. I have also published on a range of topics including audience attitudes towards streaming services, transmedia branding and game economics, transmedia narratives and literacy, and the production dynamics of alternate reality games.

My current project, The Enchanting Kinora: Domesticating Moving Images in Edwardian Britain looks at one of the earliest surviving collections of 'home movies' to explore how Edwardian screen audiences made sense of moving images and brought the into their homes and everyday lives.

I am on the Board of Trustees for Broadway, an independent cinema and arts centre in Nottingham city centre and am co-editor of the journal Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.

Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture Transmedia Television: Audiences New Media and Daily Life

Teaching Summary

My teaching interests are primarily focused within the fields of television studies, audience studies and media industry studies. I have taught on a number of modules including those concerned with… read more

Research Summary

I am primarily interested in the relationship between screen technology and audience experiences of narrative. My research spans interests in audience and industry studies, with a particular focus on… read more

Selected Publications

  • EVANS, E., 2014. Tweeting on the BBC: Audience and Brand Management via Third Party Websites. In: SANTO, AVI, JOHNSON, DEREK and KOMPARE, DEREK, eds., Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries NYU Press.
  • EVANS, ELIZABETH, 2014. "We're all a bunch of Nutters!": Production Dyanmics in ARGs International Journal of Communication. 8, 1-20
  • EVANS, ELIZABETH, FLINTHAM, MARTIN and MARTINDALE, SARAH, 2014. The Malthusian Paradox: Performance in an Alternate Reality Game Pervasive Ubiquitous Computing.
  • EVANS, ELIZABETH, 2014. Mobile Engagement: The Technological and Social Dynamics of Transmedia Pervasive Narratives. In: XU, XIAOGE, ed., Interdisciplinary Mobile Media and Communications: Social, Political and Economic Implications IGI Global.

My teaching interests are primarily focused within the fields of television studies, audience studies and media industry studies. I have taught on a number of modules including those concerned with textual analysis, introducing students to industry audience management, screen technology, television studies, audience research and video production.

I have supervised a number of postgraduate research students on topics including seriality in television, comics and videogames, authorship and branding, accidental audiences, transmedia authorship, genre contestation, suspense in horror films, digital cinema going, agency in videogames and digital literacy.

Current Research

I am primarily interested in the relationship between screen technology and audience experiences of narrative. My research spans interests in audience and industry studies, with a particular focus on transmedia narratives and innovative forms of storytelling. My first book, Transmedia Television (Routledge, 2011), explored the attitudes, opinions and values of audiences towards the development of the internet and mobile phone as extensions and alternatives to the television set. My second book, Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture (Routledge, 2020) asked audiences and practitioners to define what they mean be 'engagement' with screen content. The book offers a new model for interrogating audience screen experiences and examined how practitioners' perceptions of those experience overlap or differ from audiences themselves. I have also published on a range of topics including audience attitudes towards streaming services, transmedia branding and game economics, transmedia narratives and literacy, and the production dynamics of alternate reality games.

I am co-editor of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies and a Trustee of Broadway, an independent cinema in Nottingham.

I am currently working on a number of projects:

The Enchanting Kinora: Domesticating Moving Images in Edwardian Britain looks at one of the earliest surviving collections of 'home movies' to explore how Edwardian screen audiences made sense of moving images and brought the into their homes and everyday lives.

TV2054 is a collaboration with the Radio Times to explore what audiences will value about television in the future.

Cine-Voices: What Cinema Means to Nottingham is a collaboration with Broadway cinema to collect stories about what cinema means - both now and in the past - to Nottingham communities. These will form a workshop and exhibition exploring how cinema has been embedded within Nottingham as a city, the barriers to cinema engagement and how to improve access to cinema experiences.

Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture Transmedia Television: Audiences New Media and Daily Life

Past Research

Understanding the Multimedia Household - this project used an innovative methodology to examine how audiences were using multiple technologies in relation to television viewing. We placed cameras within participants' living rooms and use web loggers to match up viewing and online behaviour.

Connected Viewing - two project examined audience attitudes towards streaming services in the UK and in South Korea, India and Brazil. The projects were initially commissioned be Warner Bros Home Entertainment. For more information, see the Connected Viewing Initiative.

Moving Experience - this project involved a collaboration with digital artist Rik Lander to create The Memory Dealer, a transmedia experience that was part theatre, part game. We used focus groups and participant observation to explore a number of topics including how otherwise 'media literate' audiences made sense of new narrative forms and the role of music within innovative storytelling.

Engaging Screens - this project involved collecting interviews with 35 transmedia practitioners in the UK, US, Ireland, Canada and Denmark exploring how they conceive of 'engagement' and the strategies for 'engaging' audiences.

Future Research

My next project, The History of Screens in 35 objects, will explore the development of screen culture through 35 peripheral or component objects. These objects will be examined through technological, industrial and socio-cultural dynamics to explore the intersection between technology, storytelling and use.

Department of Cultural, Media and Visual Studies

University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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