Dr Gemma King

I work at the intersection of French, screen and disability studies, where I research the relationship between minority languages, culture and power. I investigate the representation of sign language, multilingualism, disability and post/colonialism on screen and in museums. My first book, Decentring France: Multilingualism and Power in Contemporary French Cinema, was published with Manchester University Press in 2017 and my second, Jacques Audiard, appeared in Manchester's French and Francophone Filmmakers series in 2021. From 2023-2026, I am an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow leading the project ‘Sign on Screen’, a Deaf-hearing collaboration on sign language in film and television.

I am Editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies, Immediate Past President of the Australian Society for French Studies and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I serve on the Advisory Boards of Contemporary French Civilization, the Edinburgh University Press book series New Directions in Francophone Studies, the Manchester University Press book series French and Francophone Filmmakers and the Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum Collective. I have received seven teaching awards, five individual and two with my ANU French colleagues, from the Australian Awards for University Teaching, the ANU and the College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS).

Sign on Screen: Language, Culture and Power in Sign Language Cinemas (Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [DECRA, DE230100070], 2023-2026)

This Australian Research Council DECRA project (DE230100070, 2023-2026) investigates how contemporary screens represent deafness and how sign language cinemas can convey both Deaf and ableist/audist perspectives. Partnering with Deaf Connect and the National Film and Sound Archive, this project blends quantitative screen history research with Deaf Studies and close film analysis to offer a framework for analysing sign language on screen in terms of completeness and empowerment. Studying feature films, series, documentaries, shorts and other screen media that include global sign language dialogue, the project builds capacity for emerging Deaf scholars including PhD, MPhil and RA roles, a sign language film festival at the NFSA in May 2026, a public film catalogue, peer-reviewed articles, journalism and the first monograph on global sign language cinemas. Ultimately, Sign on Screen aims to create new opportunities for d/Deaf-hearing dialogue and cohesion and enhanced capacity to harness screen cultures to support and reflect the diversity of signers' experience.

Hearing Fantasies: Sign Language and Deafness in Film and Television (under preparation)

Currently under preparation, this monograph is the first global study of sign language cinemas and the influence of audism on their aesthetics and narrative tropes. Alongside journal articles, short films, a global database and a film festival, it is the primary publication output of the Sign on Screen project.

Jacques Audiard (French and Francophone Filmmakers, Manchester University Press 2021)

Fragile yet forceful, macho yet transgressive, Jacques Audiard's films portray disabled, marginalised or otherwise non-normative bodies in constant states of crisis and transformation. Jacques Audiard is the first book on the cinema of one of the most influential French directors working today. It studies Audiard's screenwriting background, his collaborative practices and his use of genre motifs alongside his reputation as a celebrated French auteur. Using the motif of border-crossing – both physical and symbolic – the book explores how Audiard's films construct and transcend boundaries of many forms. With chapters focusing first on the representation of the physical body, then on French society and finally on broader transnational contexts, it reveals how Audiard's cinema occupies a space both within and beyond the imaginary of French cinema.

Decentring France: Multilingualism and Power in Contemporary French Cinema (Manchester University Press 2017)

In a world defined by the flow of people, goods, and cultures, many contemporary French films explore the multicultural nature of today’s France through language. From rival lingua francas like English to socio-politically marginalised languages such as Arabic or Kurdish, multilingual characters in these films exploit their knowledge of multiple languages and offer counter-perspectives to dominant ideologies of the role of linguistic diversity in society. Decentring France is the first substantial study of multilingual film in France. It argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power, showing how even the most historically maligned languages can empower their speakers.

Current supervision projects

Sam Martin, ‘Asserting the Deaf "Voice": Towards a Sign Language-Centred Documentary Practice’, PhD

Griffin Wright, ‘An Australian Disability Studies: Current and Future Imaginings of Disability Politics in the Australian Context’, PhD

Will Lawrence, ‘Linguas Cinematica: Non-English Languages in Anglophone Cinema’, PhD (Monash University- External Supervisor)

Sofya Gollan, ‘Silencing Deaf Stories: Hearing Portrayals of Deafness and the Use of Sign Language on Contemporary Screens’, PhD

Sophie Tallis, ‘Girlhood Bodies on French Screens: From Monstrous Feminine to Liminal Resistance’, PhD

Sabine Kildea, ‘Surveillance Capitalism in 21^st Century Media’, PhD

Alex Robinson, 'Looking Forward to the Past: Renewed Interest in Accessing Audio-visual Archives', PhD

Completed supervision projects

Zachary Karpinellison, 'The NFSA [National Film and Sound Archive] and the Film-Version', PhD, 2024

Sophie Tallis, 'Ritualising Resistance and Rebellion: The Rituals of Territory, Gender, and Belonging in the Francophone Girl Gang on Screen’, Honours, 2022

Thomas Overton-Skinner, ‘Discourses and Divergences: A Critical Exploration of Climate Change Adaptation Governance in New Caledonia’, Honours, 2020

PhD (University of Melbourne, Paris 3- Sorbonne Nouvelle), BA Hons (University of Melbourne), Dip Auslan (Deaf Connect)

contemporary screen studies; francophone cultures and societies; sign language and disability; transnational cinema studies; multilingualism; museum studies; language, power and violence on screen; (post/de)colonialism and cultural representation