Professor Jenna Ng
PhD (University College London)
PGDip (Queen Mary, University of London)
MA (University College London)
LLB (National University of Singapore)
After law school, qualifying for the Singapore Bar and a brief bout practising as a finance lawyer at major law firms in Singapore and London, I decided to do something different and obtained a PhD in Film Studies from University College London (UCL), writing my doctoral thesis on digital cinema technologies. Prior to joining UQ, I was Professor of Digital Media and Culture and Subject Head of Creative Technologies at the University of York, UK. I have also held research posts on a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and as a postdoctoral fellow at Umeå University, Sweden. I am fluent in Mandarin and English.
As Head of the School of Communication and Arts, I provide strategic direction, leadership and management of a multi-disciplinary department of over 80 academic staff. Through the School’s disciplines of art history, drama, journalism, communications, film and television, digital media culture, literature and creative and professional writing, we work to translate our world, in its broadest sense, across issues of social, cultural, political and indeed all humanistic significance. I lead the School with commitment to both future-facing vision and core values—delivering forward-thinking teaching and research aligned with global trends and industry needs while upholding leadership values of inclusivity, respect, creativity and excellence.
As a researcher, I work across conventional scholarship and creative practice on theoretical, cultural and critical analyses of digital media, with particular interests in digital imaging and screen cultures. My creative research work has won the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis from the Media Ecology Association (MEA); the Learning on Screen Special Jury Prize (and nominated in the category of "Creative Reuse"); and a Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Practice-Based Research of the Year award. My last monograph, The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), was awarded an Honourable Mention from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). I have delivered keynotes, plenaries and major lectures internationally, and regularly participate as a guest speaker or panellist at public events including art and film festivals.
My academic honours include the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship; the Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) Award; the UCL Graduate School Research Scholarship; and the Singapore Academy of Law Prize (top final-year graduate of the class). My work has also been recognised through multiple awards, including a University of York Rewarding Excellence Award for my demonstration of academic leadership; the University of York Vice-Chancellor's Teaching Award for achievement of teaching excellence; and several student nominations for University of York Students' Union Excellence Awards across various categories.
Selected publications
Creative Work
Ng J. and Tomkins, O., "The New Virtuality: A Creative Website on Blurred Boundaries Between the Real and Unreal", 2023. Winner of the 2023 John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology from the Media Ecology Association (MEA); Winner of the 2023 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) “Practice-Based Research of the Year” Outstanding Achievement Award. Published as a peer-reviewed practice-based study with Journal of Media art Study and Theory (MAST), 4(1), 2023: 96-108.
Video essay: "The New Virtuality: A Video Essay on the Disappearing Differences Between Real and Unreal", Screenworks, Vol 13.1, 2023. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Learning on Screen Awards 2023.
Books
Ng, J., The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 282, 2021. Reviews available on the journals of New Techno-Humanities; Afterimage; and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Awarded Honourable Mention in the category of Best First Monograph by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS).
Ng, J. (ed.) Understanding Machinima: essays on filmmaking in virtual worlds, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 246, 2013. Review available on The Italian Journal of Game Studies.
Peer-reviewed articles
Ng, J. and Bax, N., “Spooker Trouper: ABBA Voyage, Virtual Humans, and the Rise of the Digital Apparition”, Paragraph 46(2): 160-175, 2023. [Designated a Featured Article of the issue.]
Ng, J. and Carter, R., "Wayfaring in Space: Story as Environmental Encounters in Ruins (2011) and Sacramento (2016)", New Techno-Humanities 2(2): 113-120, 2022.
Newsome-Ward, T. and Ng, J., “Between Subjectivity and Flourishing: Creativity and Game Design as Existential Meaning”, Games and Culture, 17(4): 552-575, 2022.
Luik, J., Hook, J. and Ng, J., “Framing the Startup Accelerator Through Assemblage Theory: An ethnographic study of an intensive hub in Indonesia”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media, 28(6): 1783-1799, 2021.
Ng, J., “Seeing Movement: On Performance Capture Imagery and James Cameron’s Avatar”, Animation, Vol. 7, No. 3: 273-286, 2012.
Ng, J., “The Myth of Total Cinephilia”, Cinema Journal, 49: 2: 146-151, 2010 (contribution invited by editor).
Chapters in books
Ng, J. “Wild Polarities: Reflections on Generative AI Re-animations of the Dead”, in Jennifer O’Meara (ed.), Shaping Extended Reality and Synthetic Media: Interventions from Screen Theory & Practice, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming, 2026.
Ng, J., "The Interactive Letter: Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short's First Draft of the Revolution", in Teri Higgins and Catherine Fowler (eds), Epistolary Entanglements in Film, Media and the Visual Arts, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 173-189, 2023.
Ng, J. and Popple, S., "'People Inside': Creating Digital Community Projects on the YARN Platform", in Anne Schwan and Tara Thomson (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Digital and Public Humanities, London; New York: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 357-376, 2022.
Ng, J., "Where the Violence Lies: Re-reading Rape and Revenge in Freeze Me (Takashi Ishii, 2000)", in Stephanie Patrick and Mythili Rajiva (eds), The Forgotten Victims of Sexual Violence in Film, Television and New Media: Turning to the Margins, Cham: Palgrave, 179-202, 2022.
Ng, J., “An Alternative Rationalization of Creative AI by De-Familiarizing Creativity: Towards an Intelligibility of Its Own Terms”, in Pieter Verdegem (ed.), AI for Everyone: Critical Perspectives, London: University of Westminster Press, 49-66, 2021.
Ng, J. and Goldberg, D. Theo, “Algorithmic Studies”, in Braidotti, Rosi and Hlavajova, Marisa (eds), Posthuman Glossary, London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 26-27, 2018.
Ng, J., “The Cut Between Us: Digital Remix and the Expression of Self”, in David Theo Goldberg and Patrik Svensson (eds), Between Humanities and the Digital, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 217-228, 2015. [Re-printed on invitation as “The Cut Between Us: Digital Remix and the Expression of Self” in The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema, Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton (eds), New York: Routledge, 275-284, 2019.]