Biography

Dr Deborah Shaw is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Portsmouth, and Research Lead for the School of Film, Media and Communication. Her research interests include transnational film theory, Latin American cinema, film and migration, and gender and sexuality in film and television, and she has published widely in these areas. She is the founding co-editor of the Routledge journal Transnational Cinemas (now Transnational Screens), and her books include Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Ten Key Films, (Continuum Publishers, 2003), The Three Amigos: The Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón, Manchester University Press (2013). Co-edited books include The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro. Palgrave Macmillan, (2014), and Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, I.B.Tauris (2017), and Sense8: Transcending Television Bloomsbury Publishers (2021)

Deborah has spoken at many international conferences, and delivered keynote lectures in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Colombia. She has been an invited speaker at Universities in the UK, Spain, Brazil and the United States.  

Deborah has written articles that have been published in The Conversation, The IndependentThe New Zealand HeraldNewsweekSBSPink News, The Huffington Post and Byline Times. Her work has been widely cited in international media outlets.

Research interests

My principal areas of research have fallen into three areas: Latin American cinema, cinema and migration, transnational film theory and representations of Latinos and Latin Americans in Hollywood film.

Research outputs

2025

Jewish cosmopolitans on our screens: The case of Unorthodox (Schrader, Winger 2020)

Shaw, D.

6 Feb 2025, In: Open Screens. 7, 1, p. 1-20, 20p.

Research output: Article

2024

Transnational performances of disobedience to cultures of sexual violence

Martin, D., Shaw, D.

1 Apr 2024,

Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)

2023

Decolonising and depatriarchalising research cultures: a conversation with RAMA, the transnational Latin American women’s audiovisual research network

Seguí, I., Cavalcanti Tedesco, M., Christofoletti Barrenha, N., Shaw, D.

20 Feb 2023, In: Transnational Screens

Research output: Article

2022

A tale of two feminisms: gender critical feminism, trans inclusive feminism and the case of Kathleen Stock

Shaw, D.

15 Dec 2022, In: Women’s History Review, 13p.

Research output: Article

2021

The right to rights and Central American/Mexican migration films: reading Sin nombre (Fukunaga 2009) and La jaula de oro/The Golden Dream (Quemada-Díez 2013) with political theory

Shaw, D.

1 Sep 2021, In: Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas . 18, 3, p. 277-295, 18p.

Research output: Article

Sense8: Transcending Television

Shaw, D., Stone, R.

17 Jun 2021,

Research output: Book

The Sense8 Bible: The creation of a new creed for our times

Shaw, D.

17 Jun 2021,

Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Introduction: A Sense8 of belonging

Shaw, D., Stones, R.

20 May 2021,

Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)

View all my research outputs