Dr Mani Sharpe

Profile

Before taking up my position at Leeds, I taught film studies at Newcastle University and the Sorbonne (Paris 3). I am currently the Director of Film Studies, at Leeds.

Research interests

My most recent research has focused on cinematic representations of the face, particularly in relation to questions of psychology and politics. I was the Principal Investigator on a major public engagement project, entitled Facing the Mind, funded by the Cultural Institute, Leeds (2020-2023). This project involved setting up a series of community-orientated workshops, blending film theory and creative practice, for a group of local residents with mental health issues. A 6,000-word case study of the project was published in the journal Media Practice and Education.

Building upon this work, I am currently editing a volume of essays entitled War Faces on Screen: Photography, Film, and the Politics of Representation. Composed of 12 chapters from a range of internationally renowned scholars, this collection is the output of an international conference that I co-organised in July 2023, with Professor Katy Parry (Leeds). Transcending disciplinary boundaries, between film theory, war cinema studies, visual studies, media studies, and art history, the aim of this collection is to explore how mediatised images of the face have been used to document the phenomenon of war. It will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025.

I am in the formative stages of writing a single-authored monograph, provisionally entitled Anti-Close-Ups in Art Cinema, and which will examine how various directors have destabilized the formal conventions of the facial close-up.

I am also interested in cinematic representations of war, particularly within the context of France and Algeria. In 2023, I published a monograph on this topic, entitled Late-Colonial French Cinema: Filming the Algerian War of Independence, with Edinburgh University Press (Traditions in World Cinema series). More information about my book can be found in this three-minute interview, posted on YouTube, in this discussion that I conducted with Alan O’Leary for The New Review of Film and Television Studies, in this blog post, entitled ‘5 lesser-known examples of late-colonial French cinema’, or the Edinburgh University Press website, where you can download the Introduction of the book for free. In April 2023, I delivered a paper on my book at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, in Denver, Colorado.

I have acted as an article reviewer for journals including Limina, French Historical Studies, New Cinemas, French Politics, Culture & Society, French Studies, and Journal of Media Practice, and as a monograph reviewer for The New Review of Film and Television Studies and Transnational Screens.

I currently act as a judge for The Global Undergraduate Awards, marking various pieces of creative artwork, including photography, videography, design, and installations.

Qualifications

• PhD Newcastle University (2010-2014)
• MA Leeds (2008-2009)
• BA Leeds (2004-2008)

Student education

I teach on a variety of modules offered by both the Centre for World Cinemas and the French Section, including modules on the history of cinema, film theory, and digital cinema. 

I am happy to supervise MA/PhD students interested in any aspect of cinema and war, as well as cinemas of de-colonisation more broadly (militant cinema, Second/Third Cinema, de-colonial cinemas). 

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures
• Cinema and Television