Dr Lara Thompson

Biography

Lara writes and lectures on film. Her interests include the relationship between cinema and photography, issues of temporality and the impact of film aesthetics on storytelling and sensory experience. She is particularly interested in the way the study of film theory and aesthetics influence practical filmmaking. She received her MA and PhD under the supervision of Prof. Laura Mulvey at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her book Film Light: Meaning and Emotion (Manchester University Press, 2015) focused on the emotional impact of light in cinema. She has published and delivered conference papers internationally, including at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, at CUNY in New York, at Lund University in Sweden and at the University of Amsterdam. Lara has produced two short films and has been a cinematography jury member for Watersprite, the UK’s largest international student film festival at Cambridge University. Lara is also a novelist. She won the Virago New Crime Writer Award for her cinematic debut novel One Night, New York (Virago, 2021). 

Teaching

Lara teaches on BA Film. She is the module leader for the first-year module Visual Storytelling and lectures on the second-year module Screen and World. She has also taught across the photography and creative writing programmes.