Professor Linda Ruth Williams

Linda Ruth Williams is Professor of Film at the University of Exeter.

Her research specializes in women in the contemporary screen industries, mostly UK-focused but very much in an international context. She is part of two significant AHRC-funded projects investigating women’s work in the screen industries, considering filmmakers as creative labourers, as authors of stories and images, and as too-often hidden in history: Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary Film Culture in the UK, 2000-2015 (2014-8) and Women’s Screen Work in the Archives Made Visible (2024-8).

During her time as Clare Hall Visiting Fellow she will be researching two interconnected strands on British women filmmakers’ creative processes and physical legacies. One strand is part of a developing book provisionally titled Women’s Film History in 10 Objects, and will consider how materials and artefacts – some ephemeral, many of which may have never before been considered worthy of archiving or curation – help to excavate period and industry context, and have much to reveal about practitioners and roles. The second strand focuses on women writer-directors: the UK has fostered some distinguished female auteur voices, and this research considers screenwriters becoming directors and directors penning their own scripts.

In her wider work she has also written on representations of gender and sexuality, and U.S. film since the 1960s – her book on children and childhood in the films of Steven Spielberg is published in 2025.

Linda will be accompanied by her partner, the film critic Dr Mark Kermode, during her time as Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall.