Monday 18 December 2017

Reminder: PhD Scholarship Opportunity

Northumbria University are advertising a number of fully funded PhD scholarships. I am advertising for a project entitled “New Approaches to Contemporary American Horror Film”. 

For details about the project and how to apply, click here

The studentship includes a full stipend, paid for three years at RCUK rates (for 2017/18, this is £14,553 pa) and fees. 

The deadline for applications is 28th  January 2018, and the funding would begin on 1st October 2018. 

If you know of anyone who would be interested in applying, please share the link: 


Project Description

Horror films have been subject to examination from a variety of angles in recent years, but much of the scholarship on contemporary American horror is based in one of three commonplace approaches: a) reflectionist national readings (such as post-9/11 readings of American horror); b) psychoanalytic models (drawing from Carol Clover and Barbara Creed’s work in particular); c) Deleuzian affect-based readings. Although each is useful in its own right, these well-established approaches are limited in their potential to yield new insights. In order to push the field forward, more needs to be done to understand contemporary horror texts using innovative conceptual approaches and theoretical tools. 


The aim of this project is to investigate contemporary American horror film by drawing on the kinds of conceptual approaches and theoretical tools that have not traditionally been applied to horror film. These can be drawn from other disciplines (such as philosophy, gender studies, politics, psychology, the sciences), and can encompass discussion of studio horror or independent productions originating from America, so long as it has been created within the last decade (approximately). 


The nature of this project is that it is open to a wide variety of approaches. Possible topics could include, but are certainly not limited to, the following: 

- Gender in contemporary American horror (moving beyond psychoanalytically infused models such as ‘the gaze’, ‘the final girl’, and so forth) 
- Moral or ethical problems within contemporary American horror 
- Narrative construction and playful representations of time within contemporary American horror
- Conceptions of social or legal justice within contemporary American horror 
- Cycles within contemporary American horror (such as ‘the found footage film’) 
- Psychology and contemporary American horror: depictions of selfhood, personality disorders, fractured identities (and so forth) 
- Autonomy and entrapment within contemporary American horror 
- Victimhood within contemporary American horror 
- Contemporary American horror and sex 


This PhD studentship is based within the Department of Social Sciences and builds upon the extensive research into horror cinema already undertaken at Northumbria University. 



Eligibility and How to Apply
Please note eligibility requirement: 
• Academic excellence of the proposed student i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement. 
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required. 
• Applicants cannot apply for this funding if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere. 


For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see 




Please note: Applications that do not include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words (not a copy of the advert), or that do not include the advert reference (e.g. RDF18/…) will not be considered. 


Deadline for applications: 28 January 2018 
Start Date: 1 October 2018 


Northumbria University takes pride in, and values, the quality and diversity of our staff. We welcome applications from all members of the community. The University holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award in recognition of our commitment to improving employment practices for the advancement of gender equality and is a member of the Euraxess network, which delivers information and support to professional researchers 


Funding Notes
The studentship includes a full stipend, paid for three years at RCUK rates (for 2017/18, this is £14,553 pa) and fees


Recent publications by supervisors relevant to this project: 


  • Jones, S. (2017) “Cartesianism and Intersubjectivity in Paranormal Activity and the Philosophy of Mind”, Film-Philosophy, 21:1. 
  • Jones, S. (2016) “A View to a Kill: Perspectives on Faux-Snuff and Self”, in Jackson, N., Kimber, S., Walker, J. and Watson, T. (eds.) Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media. New York: Bloomsbury. 
  • Jones, S. (2016) “Torture Pornopticon: (In)security Cameras, Self-Governance and Autonomy”, in Aldana Reyes, X. and Blake, L. (eds.) Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. London: IB Tauris. 
  • Jones, S. (2015) “Torture Born: Representing Pregnancy and Abortion in Contemporary Survival-Horror”, Sexuality & Culture, 19:3. 
  • Jones, S. (2014) “Pretty, Dead: Sociosexuality, Rationality and the Transition into Zom-Being”, in Jones, S. and McGlotten, S. (eds.) Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead. Jefferson: McFarland. 
  • Jones, S. (2013) Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan

Wednesday 13 December 2017

Hotel Inferno III Crowdfunding campaign

“Hotel Inferno 3: The Castle of Screams” – the third of six Hotel Inferno movies – is 40% shot, and the directors have already begun editing the first half.

We’re putting every shred of our financial and filmmaking efforts into making Hotel Inferno the first ever EPIC SPLATTER SAGA.
In total, the six movies will feature 8000 blood-soaked practical effects, 1000 intricate animatronics, eye-melting 4K resolution, astonishing digital FX, huge monsters, gigantic sets, and gore & action sequences the likes of which you’ve NEVER seen before. This saga aims to re-define the Splatter Film, finally bringing the genre to a whole new level.
But to make Hotel Inferno 3 the COLOSSAL film we all want to see, we need YOUR help again. If you pre-order one of the available packages today, your support will go directly into making one of the most mind-blowing splatter movies ever created – and, of course, you’ll receive your purchase as soon as the movie is released (there is currently no set release date). More importantly, you’ll play a vital part in writing a new page in cinema history: the day the splatter genre “levelled up” We have the means and ability to finish the film, but without your help it simply won’t be the game-changing contribution to the genre that we know it could be.
Help us to create the third chapter of the first ever EPIC SPLATTER SAGA

Wednesday 6 December 2017

PhD Scholarship Opportunity

Northumbria University are advertising a number of fully funded PhD scholarships. I am advertising for a project entitled “New Approaches to Contemporary American Horror Film”. 

For details about the project and how to apply, click here

The studentship includes a full stipend, paid for three years at RCUK rates (for 2017/18, this is £14,553 pa) and fees. 

The deadline for applications is 28th  January 2018, and the funding would begin on 1st October 2018. 

If you know of anyone who would be interested in applying, please share the link: 


Project Description
Horror films have been subject to examination from a variety of angles in recent years, but much of the scholarship on contemporary American horror is based in one of three commonplace approaches: a) reflectionist national readings (such as post-9/11 readings of American horror); b) psychoanalytic models (drawing from Carol Clover and Barbara Creed’s work in particular); c) Deleuzian affect-based readings. Although each is useful in its own right, these well-established approaches are limited in their potential to yield new insights. In order to push the field forward, more needs to be done to understand contemporary horror texts using innovative conceptual approaches and theoretical tools. 


The aim of this project is to investigate contemporary American horror film by drawing on the kinds of conceptual approaches and theoretical tools that have not traditionally been applied to horror film. These can be drawn from other disciplines (such as philosophy, gender studies, politics, psychology, the sciences), and can encompass discussion of studio horror or independent productions originating from America, so long as it has been created within the last decade (approximately). 


The nature of this project is that it is open to a wide variety of approaches. Possible topics could include, but are certainly not limited to, the following: 
- Gender in contemporary American horror (moving beyond psychoanalytically infused models such as ‘the gaze’, ‘the final girl’, and so forth) 
- Moral or ethical problems within contemporary American horror 
- Narrative construction and playful representations of time within contemporary American horror
- Conceptions of social or legal justice within contemporary American horror 
- Cycles within contemporary American horror (such as ‘the found footage film’) 
- Psychology and contemporary American horror: depictions of selfhood, personality disorders, fractured identities (and so forth) 
- Autonomy and entrapment within contemporary American horror 
- Victimhood within contemporary American horror 
- Contemporary American horror and sex 


This PhD studentship is based within the Department of Social Sciences and builds upon the extensive research into horror cinema already undertaken at Northumbria University. 



Eligibility and How to Apply
Please note eligibility requirement: 
• Academic excellence of the proposed student i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities [preference for 1st class honours]); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement. 
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required. 
• Applicants cannot apply for this funding if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere. 


For further details of how to apply, entry requirements and the application form, see 


Please note: Applications that do not include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words (not a copy of the advert), or that do not include the advert reference (e.g. RDF18/…) will not be considered. 


Deadline for applications: 28 January 2018 
Start Date: 1 October 2018 


Northumbria University takes pride in, and values, the quality and diversity of our staff. We welcome applications from all members of the community. The University holds an Athena SWAN Bronze award in recognition of our commitment to improving employment practices for the advancement of gender equality and is a member of the Euraxess network, which delivers information and support to professional researchers 


Funding Notes
The studentship includes a full stipend, paid for three years at RCUK rates (for 2017/18, this is £14,553 pa) and fees


Recent publications by supervisors relevant to this project: 
  • Jones, S. (2017) “Cartesianism and Intersubjectivity in Paranormal Activity and the Philosophy of Mind”, Film-Philosophy, 21:1. 
  • Jones, S. (2016) “A View to a Kill: Perspectives on Faux-Snuff and Self”, in Jackson, N., Kimber, S., Walker, J. and Watson, T. (eds.) Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media. New York: Bloomsbury. 
  • Jones, S. (2016) “Torture Pornopticon: (In)security Cameras, Self-Governance and Autonomy”, in Aldana Reyes, X. and Blake, L. (eds.) Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon. London: IB Tauris. 
  • Jones, S. (2015) “Torture Born: Representing Pregnancy and Abortion in Contemporary Survival-Horror”, Sexuality & Culture, 19:3. 
  • Jones, S. (2014) “Pretty, Dead: Sociosexuality, Rationality and the Transition into Zom-Being”, in Jones, S. and McGlotten, S. (eds.) Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead. Jefferson: McFarland. 
  • Jones, S. (2013) Torture Porn: Popular Horror after Saw. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan

Monday 4 December 2017

Working with Necrostorm


Over the past few months I have been working with Italian horror production company Necrostorm, adapting scripts into English. My first screen-credit is on Hotel Inferno II: Cathedral of Pain (purchase here). More projects coming soon. The Hotel Inferno III crowdfunding campaign will launch soon. More projects to follow.


NSFW trailer for Hotel Inferno II below:


Saturday 2 December 2017

New Articles Coming Soon

I have two new articles coming out in print soon.

“The Origin of the Faeces” is a short piece about the tenth anniversary of the viral video 2Girls1Cup. The essays is part of a special section of Porn Studies (available in the online version here and an open-access/post-print version here). I was invited to contribute by Susanna Paasonen: read her article about 2Girls1Cup here (or an open access version here).

Here is the abstract:
On the ten year anniversary of 2Girls1Cup, this article examines the complex balance of shock, pleasure and disgust elicited by this viral video.

My article “Preserved for Posterity? Present Bias and the Status of Grindhouse Films in the 'Home Cinema' Era” was published in The Journal of Film and Video, and is available to read here (the official publication is currently open access - should that change, the pre-print version is available here).

Here is the abstract:
Despite the closure of virtually all original grindhouse cinemas, ‘grindhouse’ lives on as a conceptual term. This article contends that the prevailing conceptualization of ‘grindhouse’ is problematized by a widening gap between the original grindhouse context (‘past’) and the DVD/home-viewing context (present). Despite fans’ and filmmakers’ desire to preserve this part of exploitation cinema history, the world of the grindhouse is now little more than a blurry set of tall-tales and faded phenomenal experiences, which are subject to present-bias. The continuing usefulness of grindhouse-qua-concept requires that one should pay heed to the contemporary contexts in which ‘grindhouse’ is evoked.