Dr. Kelli Fuery

Professor Kelli Fuery completed her BA (Hons) at Macquarie University in Critical and Cultural Studies, graduating in 1995 with First Class Honors, and completed her Ph.D. (2005) at Murdoch University in Philosophy and Visual Culture. Before joining Chapman University, she held posts in contemporary film, media and cultural studies at Monash University, Australia; The University of Newcastle, Australia; and Birkbeck College, University of London.

She is the author of six books which explore the intersection of visual culture and philosophy—especially phenomenology and psychoanalysis— placing them in conversation with contemporary film, media, and creative practice. She examines how we experience images and sound not just as spectators, but as feeling, thinking, and ethical beings.

At the heart of her scholarship is a commitment to phenomenology, particularly through the work of Simone de Beauvoir and other existential thinkers. Fuery’s writing examines how cinematic and digital forms shape our perception of self, others, time, and space. Her book Ambiguous Cinema: From Simone de Beauvoir to Feminist Film- Phenomenology (2022) is a pioneering contribution to feminist and philosophical approaches to film, offering tools to interrogate ambiguity, affect, and embodied spectatorship.

Her broader body of work engages with psychoanalytic philosophy, particularly the theories of Wilfred Bion, to explore how media can act as a site of emotional processing, trauma, and ethical encounter. Her 2018 monograph Wilfred Bion, Thinking and Emotional Experience with Moving Images exemplifies her commitment to examining how thought and feeling are mediated by visual experience.

In New Media: Culture and Image (2009), Professor Fuery provides a philosophically grounded introduction to digital media that is particularly useful for students and creatives navigating contemporary culture. The book explores how new media technologies affect visual perception, identity formation and aesthetic experience, offering critical frameworks for understanding the relationship between innovation, culture, and meaning making in digital environments. It serves as a key resource for those interested in the intersections of technology, image culture, and creative industries.

Her most recent publication, Film Phenomenologies: Temporality, Embodiment and Transformation (Ed.)(2024) continues this line of inquiry, expanding film philosophy to consider how embodied viewing and sensorial meaning-making evolve across digital and interactive media platforms. The collection reflects her sustained interest in how temporality, transformation, and affect are shaped in both traditional cinema and emergent screen cultures.

For students in the Creative and Cultural Industries, Professor Fuery’s work offers a rich theoretical foundation to critically engage with cultural production, aesthetics, and the ethics of representation. Whether examining feminist soundscapes in urban cinema, the emotional life of media objects, or the politics of visibility and invisibility, her research equips students to think deeply about today’s complex creative media landscape.

Her current projects continue to push the boundaries between philosophy, culture, and creative media, making her work especially relevant for those who want to produce, critique, or transform contemporary media culture. She is a founding scholar for the British Psychoanalyst Council, an Editorial Board Member for Film-Philosophy journal and Special Issues Editor for Film Matters.