About

Polly Hember is a writer, researcher and educator working on twentieth century literature and film. She is currently a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, and has taught critical theory, literature, poetry, and film at the University of Bristol and Royal Holloway.

She completed her AHRC funded PhD at Royal Holloway in 2023, Her doctoral research explores the work of the POOL group and their queer affective network through the fictional writing of Robert Herring and Oswell Blakeston. Her work sits at the intersection of film studies, literary modernism and the history of sexuality. More broadly, Polly is interested in modernism, twentieth and twenty-first century literature, queer theory, affect studies, early cinema, visual culture, technology and literary theory. She has work published in the edited collection Hotel Modernisms, 1890-1950 (Routledge, 2023) and in Modernist Cultures.

Polly is a former postgraduate representative for The British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS) and co-edited the Modernist Review from 2019-2021. She has organised a number of events and conferences, including the AHRC Techne conference in 2019, the Modernism and Alternative Spiritualities Symposium at the RCA in 2020, and the Following the Affective Turn Symposium and Public Lecture Series in 2021. She co-hosted the AHRC podcast, the Technecast, from 2018-2022, which celebrated and platformed work being done by postgraduates and early career researchers. More recently, the has designed a PhD completion and coaching programme for the Accepted Society, which she leads with Dr Khalia Ii.

For more information about her latest projects, please get in touch.