Dr Joanne Knowles
Humanities and Social Science
I’m a senior lecturer teaching on the Media, Culture Communication and English and Media and Cultural Studies degree programmes at LJMU. I’m a textual and archival researcher, interested in a variety of popular texts and media.
Much of my work focuses on gender, as in my research with the Femorabilia archive examining girls’ magazines such as Jackie and Just Seventeen and their representation of readers’ interactions with other popular cultural forms such as fashion and TV. I’ve also previously published on chick-lit and domestic disarray.
I also research media organisations and their politics, values and related operating decisions, as seen in my work on ITV drama and broadcaster identity, and also on Channel 4's Christmas broadcasting, as well as in the research undertaken by my supervisee Youngson Ndawana as part of his completed doctorate on Zambian journalism, politics and media ownership. Organisational communication and public figures’ use of Twitter as it crosses local/global spheres is also an interest.
Finally, I maintain an interest in nineteenth-century popular texts, writers and cultural icons including animals, gardens and seaside resorts.
I’d be interested in supervising potential postgraduate students who wish to undertake research related to any of the above areas.
Degrees
2001, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, PhD, English literature
Academic appointments
Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture, Communication, Liverpool John Moores University, 2010 - present
Postgraduate training
Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, United Kingdom, Liverpool John Moores University, 2005 - 2007
Journal article
Knowles J. 2023. 'Fashion, you're incomprehensible!' Teenage girls, Jackie magazine and fashion as a negotiated social statement in the early 1970s Film, Fashion and Consumption, 12 :51-66 DOI Publisher Url Public Url
Ndawana Y, Knowles J, Vaughan C. 2021. The Historicity of Media Regulation in Zambia; Examining the Proposed Statutory Self-Regulation African Journalism Studies, 42 :59-76 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Glennon R, Hodgkinson I, Knowles J, Radnor Z, Bateman N. 2018. Public Sector "Modernisation': Examining the Impact of a Change Agenda on Local Government Employees in England Australian Journal of Public Administration, 77 :203-221 DOI Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Knowles J. 2017. Summer loving? Female orientated comedy drama, ITV and seasonal performance. Journal of Popular Television, 5 :101-117 DOI Publisher Url Public Url
Knowles J. 2013. An excess of positions: the adaptation of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" from blog to box Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, 6
Knowles J. 2008. Our foes are almost as many as our readers: debating the worth of women's reading and writing - the case of chick-lit. Journal of Popular Narrative Media, 1 :219-233 DOI Publisher Url
Internet publication
Knowles J. 2022. Beyond the snowman: Channel 4 and Christmas broadcasting Author Url Publisher Url Public Url
Chapters
Knowles J. 2017. The dirty secret: domestic disarray in chick-lit. Chappell JA, Young M. Bad Girls: Recalcitrant Women in Television, Fiction and Film. :97-117
Knowles J. The French connection: gender, morals and national culture in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's fictions New Perspectives on Mary Braddon Rodolphi. Amsterdam and New York 978-90-420-3579-9
Conference presentation:
'Essential stuff': TV reviews in Just Seventeen and the framing of TV for teenage girls, BAFTSS 2023, University of Lincoln, Oral presentation. 2023
Future wives and mothers: the domestic sphere in teenage girls' magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, International Girl Studies Association inaugural conference, University of East Anglia, Oral presentation. 2016