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Dr Alex Bevan

Lecturer

School of Communication and Arts
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
a.bevan@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 68803

Overview

Originally from Chicago, by way of New Zealand, I've been working as a researcher and teacher at UQ since November 2017. I teach Multimedia in year one and Digital Project in year three, both of which heavily emphasize the creative and collaborative process as an avenue to enact social change. My research is in below the line labor in the creative industries. My first book The Aesthetics of TV Nostalgia (Bloomsbury, 2019) is an industry ethnography of the people working in the art departments of nostalgic US television programs, especially those that examine past golden eras in American history (i.e. Mad Men). You can find my other publications in Adaptation, Television & New Media, Feminist Media Studies, Cinema Journal, and Convergence. My next book project expands my ethnography of creative labor into other highly mediatized sectors like journalism and government.

Research Interests

  • Production Studies and Media Industry Studies
    Histories of production design and art direction, and below the line labor in the media industries broadly speaking
  • Gender Studies
    Media representations of gender, race, and sexuality
  • Creativity and Labor
    Social dynamics of teamwork and creative labor within the confines of corporate restrictions like brands, budget cuts, corporate hierarchies, notions of authorship, and institutional discrimination based on gender or race.

Research Impacts

As both a reseacher and teacher, I'm interested in the ways that people work creatively within instutional corporate environments. As such, my research offers high impact on shaping the kinds of institutional environments that must maintain productivity while also encouraging moments of change and individual and collective creative thinking. I often talk to people whose work is normally invisible or under-acknowledged by the popular media and scholarhsip, like the prop makers for television shows or the summer intern working at a costume warehouse in Hollywood. However the creative decisions of these individuals and teams have lasting impact on the media that we watch and love. I'm committed to highlighting the under-appreciated and hidden creative contributions of lesser known designers working in media production and hope to expand this tenant in my work on other sectors of creative labor.

Qualifications

  • Master of Arts, Northwestern University
  • Doctor of Philosophy, Northwestern University

Publications

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Grants

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Supervision

  • 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

View all Supervision

Publications

Book

Journal Article

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • In what ways has creativity, play and social exchange manifested itself in the amateur radio community in Australia

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Reality Check: augmented reality on social media

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

gender, fashion, design history, television history, media criticism, creative industries, production design, art direction, sexuality

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Links

ORCID: 0000-0002-2013-5952

Scopus ID: 55884266800

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