Jules O’Dwyer works on contemporary French cinema, film theory, and queer studies. He gained his MPhil and PhD at Cambridge, and took up his current appointment at St John’s College in 2020. His published work has looked at a range of theoretical paradigms—including object-oriented thought, apparatus theory, and questions of intertextuality and stardom—through the lens of French film, ranging from 1950s ethnographic film to recent queer cinema.  He is currently finalizing two books: a monograph on spatiality and sexual cultures in French cinema, tentatively titled The Seduction of Space (University of Minnesota Press), and Hotels (Fordham University Press’s ’Cutaways’ series), which considers cinema’s enduring fascination with spaces of temporary dwelling.  For his next project, he will expand his long-standing interest in cinematic space in new directions by exploring how French and Francophone filmmakers and theorists have engaged with, and sought to politicize, the increasingly porous boundaries between the cinema, the museum and the art gallery to negotiate questions of cultural difference. An early prize-winning essay pertaining to this project was published in Screen in 2017. 

Jules contributes to undergraduate teaching in Film Studies and Modern Languages, and he convenes his own MPhil module, ‘Spaces of Queer Cinema’. He has organized five conferences to date and has most recently run the Centre for Film and Screen’s research seminars (2021-23) and co-organized and acted as translator for 2023's filmmaker-in-residence, Christophe Honoré.  Jules is a host at the New Books Network and co-editor of World Picture, an open-access journal of critical theory and visual culture.