Originally from the States, I've been lecturing at UQ since 2017. I teach Multimedia and Digital Project in the Bachelor of Communications, both of which center on embedding critical perspectives on media into creative and collaborative design and production processes. My research focuses on the relationship among gender, technological change and space. My methodological approaches combine textual analysis (looking at media content) with more industry-facing, hands-on approaches.
The current book projects turn to representations of gender violence in popular media. My second book, Representing Gender Violence in Contemporary Screen Media: Cutting Through the Park, is under contract with Routledge and it studies themes of surveillance technology in representations of stranger rape in television and film. My third book project, Feeling Safe: Gender Harm and Safety DIscourses in Platform Media, studies themes in gender safety discourses across various platforms including safety apps and dating apps.
My first book The Aesthetics of TV Nostalgia (Bloomsbury, 2019) is an industry study of the people designing sets and costumes for nostalgic US television programmes. I address how questions around gender play out on television alongside larger concerns around historical progress and regress that are attached to technological change. You can find my other publications in the areas of television representations of gender, the female body in narratives around nationhood, digital archives, and creative production in Adaptation, Television & New Media, Feminist Media Studies, Cinema Journal, Continuum, Surveillance & Society and Convergence.
My research on gender violence addresses one of the most pervasive and systemic of social crises. The binary of domestic violence and stranger violence, as it is constructed in media and platform design, hinders and derails public attention, intervention, and policy. The way violence against women is represented in media tells us repeated stories around what spaces and behaviors are safe, how women's movements should be trackable with technology, and whom is at fault or responsible.
I welcome any industry, NFP, or government collaborations that place gender safety at the center of their remits. I offer skillsets in the areas of gender advoacy, gender education, media and communications anaylsis, brand analysis, multiplatform branding and messaging, and user experience research.
Journal Article: Jon Hamm's Post-Mad Men Persona and Representations of Hegemonic Masculinity
Bevan, Alex (2023). Jon Hamm's Post-Mad Men Persona and Representations of Hegemonic Masculinity. Celebrity Studies, ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print), 1-16. doi: 10.1080/19392397.2023.2226264
Journal Article: Dating, dying and digital connection during COVID
Bevan, Alex (2022). Dating, dying and digital connection during COVID. Meanjin, 81 (3), 150-159.
Journal Article: Heard/Depp: A Movement Built on Absence & What I'm Not Saying
Bevan, Alex (2022). Heard/Depp: A Movement Built on Absence & What I'm Not Saying . MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture.
Media Infancies: Labor Cultures When New Media Technologies Disrupt
(2019–2021) UQ Early Career Researcher
In what ways has creativity, play and social exchange manifested itself in the amateur radio community in Australia
Doctor Philosophy
Reality Check: augmented reality on social media
Doctor Philosophy
Le Corbusier's media of design: an inquiry of drawing, representation and design ideation through architectural case studies
Master Philosophy
The aesthetics of nostalgia TV: production design and the Boomer era
Bevan, Alex (2019). The aesthetics of nostalgia TV: production design and the Boomer era. New York, NY, United States: Bloomsbury. doi: 10.5040/9781501331442
The stone-cold power dame: TV women in power, state security, and national discourse
Bevan, Alex (2022). The stone-cold power dame: TV women in power, state security, and national discourse. TV Transformations and Transgressive Women: From Prisoner Cell Block H to Wentworth. (pp. 289-309) edited by Radha O'Meara, Craig Batty, Tessa Dwyer and Stayci Taylor. Oxford, United Kingdom: Peter Lang.
Jon Hamm's Post-Mad Men Persona and Representations of Hegemonic Masculinity
Bevan, Alex (2023). Jon Hamm's Post-Mad Men Persona and Representations of Hegemonic Masculinity. Celebrity Studies, ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print), 1-16. doi: 10.1080/19392397.2023.2226264
Dating, dying and digital connection during COVID
Bevan, Alex (2022). Dating, dying and digital connection during COVID. Meanjin, 81 (3), 150-159.
Heard/Depp: A Movement Built on Absence & What I'm Not Saying
Bevan, Alex (2022). Heard/Depp: A Movement Built on Absence & What I'm Not Saying . MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture.
Women’s bodies and the evolution of anti-rape technologies: from the hoop skirt to the smart frock
Wilson-Barnao, Caroline, Bevan, Alex and Lincoln, Robyn (2021). Women’s bodies and the evolution of anti-rape technologies: from the hoop skirt to the smart frock. Body and Society, 27 (4), 30-54. doi: 10.1177/1357034x211058782
Designed for threat: Surveillance, mass shootings, and pre-emptive design in school architecture
Bevan, Alex (2019). Designed for threat: Surveillance, mass shootings, and pre-emptive design in school architecture. Surveillance and Society, 17 (3/4), 550-564. doi: 10.24908/ss.v17i3/4.7077
Transferring below-the-line skillsets across creative industries in early television
Bevan, Alex (2019). Transferring below-the-line skillsets across creative industries in early television. Continuum, 33 (4), 1-15. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2019.1621265
3-D printed sets and props : how designers integrate digital technologies
Bevan, Alexandra (2018). 3-D printed sets and props : how designers integrate digital technologies. Convergence, 24 (6), 135485651878934-567. doi: 10.1177/1354856518789345
Transmedia theory's author discourse and its limitations
O'Meara, Radha and Bevan, Alex (2018). Transmedia theory's author discourse and its limitations. M / C Journal: A Journal of Media and Culture, 12 (1).
How to make victory rolls: gender, memory and the archive in YouTube pinup girl hair tutorials
Bevan, Alex (2017). How to make victory rolls: gender, memory and the archive in YouTube pinup girl hair tutorials. Feminist Media Studies, 17 (5), 755-773. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2017.1298645
Bevan, Alex (2015). Reality TV by June Deery. Information, Communication and Society, 19 (12), 1799-1802. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1114658
The National Body, Women and Mental Health in Homeland
Bevan, Alex (2015). The National Body, Women and Mental Health in Homeland. Cinema Journal, 54 (4), 145-151. doi: 10.1353/cj.2015.0048
Archiving the Digital Transition in the Boomer TV Sitcom Remake
Bevan, Alex (2013). Archiving the Digital Transition in the Boomer TV Sitcom Remake. Adaptation, 6 (3), 305-319. doi: 10.1093/adaptation/apt007
Nostalgia for Pre-Digital Media in Mad Men
Bevan, Alex (2012). Nostalgia for Pre-Digital Media in Mad Men. Television & New Media, 14 (6), 546-559. doi: 10.1177/1527476412451499
From chastity belts to smart frocks: The promise of rape-prevention technology
Wilson-Barnao, Caroline, Bevan, Alex and Lincoln, Robyn (2019). From chastity belts to smart frocks: The promise of rape-prevention technology. Association of Internet Researchers Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 3-5 October, 2019.
Transferring Below-the-Line Skillsets Across Creative Industries in Early Television
Bevan, Alex (2019). Transferring Below-the-Line Skillsets Across Creative Industries in Early Television. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Seattle, WA, United States, March 14 2019.
Wentworth, Surveillance and Citizenship
Bevan, Alex (2018). Wentworth, Surveillance and Citizenship. Wentworth is the New Prisoner Conference, Melbourne, Australia, April 6 2018.
Designed for Threat: School Architecture, Mass Shootings and Surveillance Culture
Bevan, Alex (2017). Designed for Threat: School Architecture, Mass Shootings and Surveillance Culture. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago, IL, United States, March 22-26 2017.
One Fifth the Thickness of a Human Hair: 3D Printing and New Approaches in Film and TV Art Direction
Bevan, Alex (2016). One Fifth the Thickness of a Human Hair: 3D Printing and New Approaches in Film and TV Art Direction. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Atlanta, GA, March 30-April 3 2016.
Designing for Liveness: Art Direction and “Quality” in Early Network Anthology Dramas
Bevan, Alex (2015). Designing for Liveness: Art Direction and “Quality” in Early Network Anthology Dramas. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Montreal, Canada, March 25-29 2015.
How to Make Victory Rolls: Material Memory and Feminisms in Pinup Girl YouTube Tutorials
Bevan, Alex (2013). How to Make Victory Rolls: Material Memory and Feminisms in Pinup Girl YouTube Tutorials. Console-ing Passions Conference, Leicester, United Kingdom, June 25-27 2013.
Latina Identity and the Politics of Vintage on Ugly Betty
Bevan, Alex (2012). Latina Identity and the Politics of Vintage on Ugly Betty. Console-ing Passions Conference, Boston, MA, United States, July 19-20 2012.
Remaking the Cleavers: Archiving Television in Film Adaptations of the Boomer Era Family Sitcom
Bevan, Alex (2012). Remaking the Cleavers: Archiving Television in Film Adaptations of the Boomer Era Family Sitcom. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Boston, MA, United States, March 21-25 2012.
Bevan, Alex (2010). Archiving the Future/Mobilising the Past: “Remembering Baby Boom Advertising Toward ‘Post-Feminist’ Ends?”. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Los Angeles, CA, United States, March 17-21 2010.
Masculinity, Family and Nostalgia for Postwar Imaging Technologies
Bevan, Alex (2010). Masculinity, Family and Nostalgia for Postwar Imaging Technologies. Console-ing Passions Conference, Eugene, OR, United States, April 24-26 2010.
Bevan, Alex (2008). Desperate Housewives: New Media, Historical Memory and the Constitution of Female Identity and Feminism. Console-ing Passions Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, United States, April 24-26 2008.
The Ethics of Redesign: Gender, Race and Class in Dr. 90210
Bevan, Alex (2008). The Ethics of Redesign: Gender, Race and Class in Dr. 90210. Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Philadelphia, PA, United States, 8-11 March, 2008.
Bevan, Alex (2017). Never Been Cool (podcast). Itunes and YouTube: Itunes and YouTube.
The Incessant Violation in Aronosky's Mother! Makes Me Mad in a Good Way
Bevan, Alex (2017, 10 13). The Incessant Violation in Aronosky's Mother! Makes Me Mad in a Good Way PopMatters
Media Infancies: Labor Cultures When New Media Technologies Disrupt
(2019–2021) UQ Early Career Researcher
In what ways has creativity, play and social exchange manifested itself in the amateur radio community in Australia
Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor
Other advisors:
Reality Check: augmented reality on social media
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Le Corbusier's media of design: an inquiry of drawing, representation and design ideation through architectural case studies
Master Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Algorithmic Realities: Platform Data Processing Perceptions of Productivity Content Creators, and Their Influence
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors:
Diffusion of New Media and Public Service Broadcasting: Is New Media a Lifeline for Public Radio Broadcasting in Bangladesh?
Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor
Other advisors: