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Department staff:
- Qualifications:PhD (City University); MA Journalism (City University); BA Hons History (Queen Mary, University of London)
- Position:Senior Lecturer - Media Communications
- Department:ACE - Creative and Cultural Industries
- Telephone:+4411732 82826
- Email:Katie.Toms@uwe.ac.uk
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About me
I have 10 years industry experience both as a print and multi-platform arts journalist at a national news organisation and as an arts PR at a Southbank Centre, the UK's largest arts centre.
As a journalist I worked at the Observer Review as an arts commissioning editor and writer, reviewer and interviewer, and then as a freelance arts reviewer, writer and interviewer, mainly for the Observer and Guardian.
I worked at Southbank Centre for five years in arts PR covering live music, dance, theatre, poetry, literature and festivals. I worked with a huge range of people – everyone from Annie Lennox to President Jimmy Carter and J.K. Rowling. I did the launch PR for the annual women's festival at Southbank Centre – WOW - Women of the World.
A selection of some of my work as a journalist can be found here:
https://katietoms.wordpress.com
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/katietoms
At UWE I lead the PR Pathway on the Media Communications degree. I have over five years’ experience delivering high quality teaching at six leading institutions (UWE, Cardiff University, City University, Goldsmiths College, London College of Communications and Canterbury Christchurch University), across degrees in journalism, PR, publishing and linguistics, and MA Journalism. This includes module leading, delivering lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops, marking and 3rd year dissertation supervision.
Area of expertise
My current research is concerned with the representation of women in a complex cultural landscape, juxtaposing a resurgence in feminist activism in the mid to late 2000s with an intensification of online misogyny. It considers the internet as at once a key enabler of feminist activism and a disabler of progress towards equality for women, where, as Banet-Weiser (2015) identifies, a popular feminist zeitgeist is mirrored by a popular misogynist zeitgeist. My research examines key case studies of women who have been targeted by misogynistic online abuse, such as the campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, MP Diane Abbott and Professor Mary Beard and considers co-ordinated campaigns of ‘male supremacy hate’ such as #GamerGate and the ‘toxic technocultures’ (Massanari, 2017) of Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) groups gathering on the 'manosphere', via discussion sites such as Reddit, 4chan and 8chan. In my work I scope the current mediascape and assess this deeply contradictory environment for women, and seek to understand this power struggle as part of the ongoing project to silence women who take up public space.
I am interested in public displays and expressions of misogyny, particularly on the record public defences and argumentations – in parliament, media comment pieces, media interviews, by public figures such as MPs, comment journalists like Rod Liddell and radio phone-ins.
My research continues to trace the dominant discourses around public sexism and misogyny, particularly with regards to articulations of feminist resistance.
I welcome enquiries for PhD supervision about: media representation of women, feminism and violence against women; public and private expressions and argumentations about sexism and misogyny; broadcast, print, film and advertising regulation of sexism and discrimination, in particular the tension in human rights law between Article 10 Freedom of Expression and Article 14 Prohibition of Discrimination; group defamation and third party complaints procedures in relation to discrimination.
Publications
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