Ms Christina Isaac-Viegas
Contact
- Email: k1653422@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Kingston School of Art, Knights Park
- Faculty: Faculty of Engineering, Computing and the Environment, Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Creative and Cultural Industries, School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry
- Department: Department of Applied and Human Sciences, Department of Creative Industries
- Research groups/centres: Criminology and sociology research, Film, television and new broadcasting media research
- Job market candidate
Research project: Interrogating the Forensic Gaze through the Cinematic Lens
Abstract
My project is creative practice-led research.
I am using crime scene photography from the National Archives of London and Paris, and the Metropolitan Police Service's Forensic Archive (London, UK) and crime scene photography from the Préfecture de Paris (Paris, France) to explore the forensic eye through the work of the female forensic officer – the SOCOs and the detectives - the under-explored female forensic gaze lost among the shrouded archived material. I will do this through the creative act of filming, thereby using the cinematic eye of the camera by myself, a lady filmmaker.
A practice-led interdisciplinary approach between film and criminology allows my theoretical ideas to be actualised – through the act of filming records of crime scenes, that is, through the cinematic lens, I intend to interrogate the forensic gaze to explore and highlight it as a gendered gaze – this will impact the evolution of documenting and preserving of evidence through newer ways of looking and documenting crime. Using digitality to extend the forensic gaze, my work will also challenge already established notions of film theory such as the male gaze, the female gaze and the flaneur's gaze.
Time period – 50-year time period – from 1970 to 2020.
- I will present my research findings through the following:a sci-fi film to underline how film reconciles the ‘database' of evidence and the ‘narrative' of crime, thereby foregrounding the narratological form of storytelling – crime tales retold through the female forensic officer, wherein I hope to contribute to new knowledge in the area of the forensic gaze by using the approach of the feminist critique in Thriller (1979) and cross-pollinating it with the ideas of the image and time that we see in La Jetée (1962),
- a personal digital repository of crime artefacts to enable digital flânerie for the aficionado of crime fiction as they virtually (transcending gender) occupy the mind of the detective solving crimes; as an adjunct to the main project,
- a documentary on the evolvement of the Metropolitan forensic officer beyond gender,
- a critical reflection on my creative research – 40000 words.
- Research degree: Practice-based PhD
- Title of project: Interrogating the Forensic Gaze through the Cinematic Lens
- Research supervisor: Dr Corin Depper
- Other research supervisor: Dr Baljit Kaur Thatti (née Ghatora)
Biography
I am a Postgraduate Researcher at Kingston University doing practice-based research in Crime and Forensics through the act of Filming. I am a mature student and have studied and worked in Kingston University London over the last five years – have been a course representative, academic mentor and student ambassador thereby gaining a rich body of work experience in various departments and working and collaborating with a varied mix of excellent staff at the university. Before stepping into academics, my past work experience comprises a long, rich stint of journalism – from the first step of the ladder as reporter to becoming chief-editor, I was involved in interviewing people and celebrities from various fields in life, planning and writing stories, copy-editing, designing pages for publishing and making and editing videos/films.
Areas of research interest
- Forensic Gaze of the Crime Scene
- Flanery in the Forensic Archive
- The Female Forensic Officer - SOCOs and detectives
- Film Language
- Memory in Film
- Database Form and Narrative in Film
- Cinematic Time
- Time Image in Cinema
- Phenomenological Imagery in the Written Word of the Screenplay
- Psychoanalysis and Horror
Qualifications
- MA with Distinction - Film Studies: Critical and Historical Studies, Philosophy, Horror, Censorship & Subversion (2019-'20).
- BA (Hons.) First Class - Politics, Television and New Broadcasting Media (2016-'19)
Funding or awards received
- Orchid Award 2012 - Women Achievers, Journalism. Goa.
- Kingston Gold Award 2019 - Kingston University, London.
- Politics Prize Awarded in recognition of Outstanding Performance in Politics 2018-'19 - Kingston University, London.
- Film Studies Prize Awarded for Outstanding Achievement on the course 2019-'20 - Kingston University, London.
- Postgraduate Progression Scholarship.