Emily is an artist, filmmaker and SGSAH (AHRC) PhD researcher.

Centring on themes of care, control and health inequalities, Emily works collaboratively with family, friends and community groups to explore lived experiences of embodied difference, illness and disability. Her projects seek to communicate with, through and between bodies to reveal that which remains hidden / unheard in society. 

Her practice-based PhD research question explores: Can a phenomenology of affect in experimental film practice translate women’s embodied knowledge of long-term illness? 

The collaborative project works with women in Scotland to reveal new ways of representing sensations relating to illness experience. Moving beyond the five senses, the research process uses experimental film to translate the affective qualities of illness that may be difficult to articulate. Working with Scotland’s EndoWarriors and the specialist endometriosis research team EXPPECT, Emily is currently developing Deviant, a series of three short 16mm films exploring women’s experiences of endometriosis, collective care, chronic pain and mis/communication. Addressing health inequalities and ‘diagnostic imperialism’, which exerts power over who has access to support and who does not, the project examines the label of ‘deviance’ when applied to women’s bodies, using endometriosis as a potent example of pain being side-lined as deviance. ​​​​​The works aim to address issues of stigma and gender-based health inequalities in Scotland by foregrounding women’s lived experiences. 

Emily holds an MScR in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices (Distinction) from the University of Edinburgh and she has shared projects across the UK and internationally in festivals, conferences and with organisations including the Southbank Centre, Alchemy Film and Arts, the Royal Scottish Academy, Creative Scotland, British Council and Unlimited.