Xiang Fan

Film Festivals and Curation; Grassroots Film Cultures; Digital Distribution and Piracy; Online Exhibition Culture and Streaming Platforms; Independent and Art Cinema in Greater China; Sinophone Women's Cinema; AI and Screen Culture; Gender Representation in Digital Culture; Digital Research Methods (qualitative). 

I completed my PhD in Media Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Before joining the University of East Anglia, I taught at King’s College London, the University of Birmingham, and the University of the Arts London. From 2023 to 2024, I worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher on the AHRC-funded project Independent Cinema in China: State, Market and Film Culture (2019–2024) at Newcastle University.

My research lies at the intersections of film and media industries, cultural studies, and digital anthropology. I am the author of Contemporary Art Cinema Culture in China (Bloomsbury, 2024), the first book-length study of the distribution and reception of art cinema in twenty-first-century China. The book won the 2026 Best First Monograph Award from BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) and was nominated for the 2025 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examines how informal exhibition networks, underground digital distribution, and online film criticism shape alternative forms of film culture while simultaneously negotiating with the state and market forces.

My current research examines how emerging digital technologies and media cultures are reshaping the production, distribution, and reception of contemporary screen media. I am particularly interested in post-COVID transformations in grassroots film distribution and exhibition, including women-led online film festivals, digital affects, and community filmmaking. I am also developing work on diasporic placemaking, digital storytelling, and affective archives through community-led creative practices. More recently, my research has turned to the role of generative AI in nonfiction filmmaking, curation, and cultural memory, particularly its use in reimagining trauma and unspoken histories. This work engages with wider questions around AI ethics, creativity, and activism.

Beyond teaching and research, I am actively involved in film curation and criticism, with a particular focus on decolonising archives and memory, feminist filmmaking, and the intersections of digital media and AI in the Global South. My most recent curatorial project at the Institute of Contemporary Arts was Ana Vaz: Sounds of the Past, Lights of the Future.

• Decolonial approaches to digital distribution and piracy
• Post-COVID online exhibition cultures
• Feminist film and media cultures
• Community filmmaking practices
• Interactive and immersive media
• AI in nonfiction filmmaking and audiovisual curation
• Digital archives and personal histories
• Participatory and co-creative research methods