My teaching is focused on audiovisual media, such as film, television, and advertising, and particularly the contribution made by music and sound. 

My current research focuses on audiovisual media in relation to the energy humanities, and particularly petrocultures. I am writing a book about oil on screens (e.g., feature films, television series, documentaries, promotional media by/for oil companies, and the advertising of products and brands): 'Gushing!: Oil and audiovisual media'. This research is supported by the award of a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship (January-December 2024) and an ECA sabbatical (January to May 2025). I am currently co-editor of books on audiovisual media and climate change, and on "petrosonics".

I have written monographs, articles and book chapters, and co-edited books on a wide range of topics: e.g., the prestige films made by and for the Shell Film Unit, television series’ title sequences and the music "postfaces" of their end credits, stage and screen productions of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1947 and 1951), Brian De Palma's 'Phantom of the Paradise' (1974), performing and workers’ rights during the “silent era”.

I continue to be fascinated by the the audiovisuality of short form promotional media (such as advertisements, films projecting corporate social responsibility, titles, teasers, and trailers), most recently in relation to oil media.

I have been co-investigator on research grants such as the AHRC-funded network, 'The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain' (with Prof Julie Brown), and a partner on the Leverhulme Trust-funded International Network that explored 'The Phantom on Film — Screen Adaptations of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra: Routes of Cultural Transfer' (led by Prof Corman Newark).

Publications from a long, long time ago (2004) include a co-edited collection of essays on the films and television series of David Lynch, and a monograph about film soundtracks as institutional critique.