Dr Victoria McCollum

Overview

Dr Victoria McCollum is Director of Development and External Partnerships and Senior Lecturer Cinematic Arts at Ulster University, Derry. Victoria has strong research interests in difficult screen texts (films, TV and video games) that revolve around horror, demonisation, war and terror. She engages in lively and interdisciplinary research about what we watch and play, arguing that dark popular culture acts as a cultural barometer, reflecting the social, political, and cultural climate of its era.

Victoria has published a number of cutting-edge books, including:

• Post-9/11 Heartland Horror: Rural Horror Films in an Era of Urban Terrorism (2016)
• HBO’s Original Voices: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power (2018)
• Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism and Resistance (2018)
• Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear (2019)
• Resist! Protest Media and Popular Culture in the Brexit-Trump Era (2020)
• Bloody Women! Women Directors of Horror(2021)
• Blumhouse: The New House of Horror (2021)

She is Co-Investigator on a Higher Education Research Capital (HERC) project that will deliver £536k investment in a new Virtual Production Facility at Ulster. She is also working as a director, producer and researcher on a supernatural heritage project on The Witches of Islandmagee.

Victoria has previously held positions at BBC, ITV, MTV and HBO (Time Warner Inc), and has collaborated on projects with Apple, Cartoon Network, Cinemax, Facebook, New Line Cinema, Sesame Street, Sky Atlantic, Telltale Games, Time Warner, Twitter and Universal Music Group.