Robbie Mills

Robbie Mills

Mr

Personal profile

Research interests (short)

  • Queer film and video histories.
  • Contemporary critical and political theory (particularly work pertaining to carcerality and abolition).
  • Politics, activism, and aesthetics.
  • Film historiography.
  • Marginal (independent, underground, experimental) media cultures.

My doctoral thesis poses a series of questions pertaining to the history, theory, and politics underscoring a range of oppositional media practices produced during the North American AIDS crisis. Drawing on archival research, close textual analysis, and queer-theoretical enquiry, this work both challenges and expands current conceptualisations of an "alternative AIDS media," arguing that we cannot, and should not, talk of the political value underscoring such a mode without making reference to the concrete networks of resistance that were emerging simultaneously.

Promiscuous in its scope and methodology, this project traces the cultural reverberations of numerous shifts in queer thought and direct-action taking place throughout the 1980s and 1990s, reflecting on the various ways that “emergent” oppositional sentiments transformed and expanded as a consequence of their drift from street to screen. The implications of my intervention are far-reaching, imploring us to re-assess what an effective queer film historiography might look like, what we give leverage to in our archives of political revolt, and, ultimately, how we narrate the sprawled, transmedial histories of queer sustenance and opposition.

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
  • SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals

Education/Academic qualification

MPhil (with Distinction) in Screen Media and Cultures, University of Cambridge

Award Date: 1 Jul 2015