Ellie Richardson

Supervisor: Andrew Webber

Research Topic: Images of emancipation: feminine performance and the construction of women in Weimar film

Ellie is currently completing her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Andrew Webber and funded by the Cambridge Trust. Her project investigates to what extent Weimar-era films can be viewed as feminist, and what value they might have to feminism and gender studies. She is particularly interested in the role performance plays in the films, and to what extent performance is subversive. Her research considers, amongst other elements, comedy, the carnivalesque, dance, make-up, doubling and the exotic. The most crucial aspect of her approach is the tension between image and narrative, and whether images can work against the narrative in which they appear, and be subversive images of emancipation.

Scholarships/Prizes:

Cambridge Trust Vice-Chancellor's and Tiarks Scholarship

Conference Papers:

"Thinking Outside the (Toy)Box: Masquerade, Performance and Subversion in Ernst Lubitsch’s Die Puppe (1919)" - 70th National Postgraduate Colloquium in German Studies, June 2022

Other Roles:

Co-organiser of the Cambridge German Graduate Research Seminar (Michaelmas Term 2022).