Genetics and Culture: A Research Conversation between Sofia Bull and Clare Hanson Seminar

Details of Talk 

Literature and Television have made significant contributions to the public understanding of genetics in contemporary culture. In this research conversation, two leading experts on the culture of genetics in the fields of film, literature and television studies present some of their research findings and discuss the ways in which different cultural narratives and media have tried to represent the gene. 

Speaker Information 

Sofia Bull is Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton; Dr Bull graduated from Stockholm University (Sweden) with a PhD in Cinema Studies in 2012 and has been a visiting doctoral student at King's College London (2008-2009) and Queen Mary, University of London (2010-2011). Before starting at the University of Southampton in 2015, Dr Bull worked as Assistant Professor in film and television studies at University of Gothenburg (Sweden), as well as conducting two postdoctoral research projects: the first at the Women Film Pioneers Project, Columbia University and the second at the Department of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick. Dr Bull's research and teaching covers both film and television, but Dr Bull has a particular expertise in medico-scientific discourses on television. Dr Bull's PhD thesis examined science, biomedicine and genetics in forensic crime dramas, particularly CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and she is the author of Television and the Genetic Imaginary (Palgrave, 2018). 

Clare Hanson is Professor of English at the University of Southampton. Professor Hanson's main research interests are in literature and science and she has published three monographs in this field. These include Genetics and the literary imagination (Oxford 2020); Eugenics, literature and culture in post-war Britain (Routledge 2012); and A cultural history of pregnancy: pregnancy, medicine and culture 1750-2000 (2004). Professor Hanson has a longstanding interest in contemporary women’s writing and is a founder member of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association.