KIRSTY SINCLAIR DOOTSON
EDUCATION
2018 PhD, Yale University, History of Art with Film Studies
2011 MA, University of Warwick, Film and Television Studies
2007 MPhil, University of Cambridge, History of Art
2006 BA Hons, University of Cambridge, History of Art
APPOINTMENTS
2025 Associate Professor in Art and Material Cultures of Britain, University College London
2023 Lecturer in Film and Media, University College London
2019-2022 Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St Andrews
2018-2021 Junior Research Fellow, Newnham College, Cambridge University
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2023 The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality, and British Modernity (Paul Mellon Centre/Yale University Press)
Edited Collections
Film Stock: An International History of a Sensitive Medium, co-edited with Alice Lovejoy and Pansy Duncan (under contract with University of Minnesota Press)
Articles
2025 with Poorvi Gaur, ‘A History of Colour Cinema that Can Account for India: The Bombay Film Laboratory, Kashmir’s Climate, and Gevacolor’s Pamposh’, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 16:1, May 2025
2025 ‘White Hot and Agfa Cool: Race, Heat and Colour in The Zone of Interest’, World Picture Journal, Issue 15: Next, February 2025
2020 with Zhaoyu Zhu, ‘Did Madame Mao Dream in Technicolor? Rethinking Cold War Colour Cinema through Technicolor’s “Chinese Copy’”, Screen 61:3 (Autumn 2020): 343-367
2019 ‘The Texture of Capitalism: Industrial Oil Colours and the Politics of Paint in the Work of G. F. Watts’, British Art Studies 14, November 2019
2016 “The Hollywood Powder Puff War”: Technicolor Cosmetics in the 1930s’, Film History 28, 1 (2016): 107-31
Book chapters
2025 with Xin Peng, ‘Hollywood Color: Race, Aesthetics, Technology’, in The Routledge Companion to American Film History, eds. Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Paula J. Massood, 146-155.
2024 ‘Mapping the Laboratory: Technicolor Across Asia and Europe’, in Global Film Color: The Monopack Revolution at Midcentury, eds. Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe, Rutgers University Press, 2024
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
2023-2025 AHRC Research Networking Grant
2024 Best First Monograph Award, British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
2024 First Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association
2024 Paul Mellon Centre Research Support Grant
2022 Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award, SCMS
2022 Publication Grant Historians of British Art
2022 Publication Grant, Association of Print Scholars
2021 Screen Biennial Award
2019 Frances Blanshard Dissertation Prize, Yale University
2018 Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, ACLS (declined)
2028 Research Travel Grant, Huntington Library
2017 Junior Fellowship, Paul Mellon Centre
2016 Paul Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, CASVA (declined)
2013-2014 Museum Research Consortium Fellowship, MoMA
2010–2011 AHRC Research Preparation Masters Studentship
2007–2008 Henry Fellowship, Yale University
CONFERENCES AND TALKS
Keynote Lectures
2023 ‘The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity’, MPhil Conference, Centre for Film and Screen, Cambridge University
2021 ‘What Colour is the Anthropocene?’, Deanthrocentric Materialism and the Politics of Matter Conference, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris
Selected Invited Talks
2025 ‘British Oil Paints in the Age of Empire: Charles Roberson’s Media Climates’, Materials19: New Meaning in the Matter of Nineteenth-Century Art, Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne
2025 ‘A History of Colour Cinema that Can Account for Indian Cinema’, University of Manchester, Drama and Film Department
2025 ‘Cotton, Silver, Gelatin: Film Stock’s Racial Materialities’, Sorbonne Université, Living Matter: Voix Anglophones Littérature et Esthétique Research Group
2024 ‘Television Black, Television White: The BBC’s Colour Problem’, JNU New Delhi, Centre for Cinema Studies
2024 ‘The Ghost of Miss Gevaert: Hauntings in Asian Colour Film Archives’, University of Birmingham, Centre for Film & Moving Image
2023 ‘Celluloid Skin: Transparency, Sensitivity, and the Racialization of Film’, Materializing Transparency, Eikones, University of Basel
2023 ‘Decolonising in Technicolor: Post-war Colour Cinema in Britain and India’, Paul Mellon Centre
2022 ‘Skin, Colour, and Sensitivity: The Racial Histories of Chromatic Cinema’, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
2022 ‘The Complexion of the Chromolithograph: Colouring Skin in Victorian Print’, Graphic Arts Group, The Courtauld Institute, London
2020 ‘Technicolor in India: Jhansi Ki Rani and the Politics of Printing’, Cambridge University, Centre for Film and Screen
2020 ‘The Inks of Commerce: Colour Printing in the Age of Chromolithography’, University College London, History of Art Department
Conferences and Symposia Convened
2025 Bombay Film Colour, University College London
2022 The Materials of Modernity, Newnham College, Cambridge
2018 Colour Control, Paul Mellon Centre, London
2016 Curating the Moving Image, Yale University
2015 What a Lovely Day: Mad Max Fury Road and Interstellar, Yale University
Conference Panels Convened
2025 Bombay Colour in the Cold War, The Colour Fantastic, EYE Film Museum
2023 Racialised Media Labour: Systems and Processes, Screen
2022 Gelatin and the Politics and Aesthetics of Film Stock, Screen
2020. Lab/Collab: Exchange and Circulation in the Film Laboratory, BAFTSS
2019 Colour Transmissions: Aesthetics, Identity and Mid-Century Television, SCMS
TEACHING
Graduate Seminars
Global Film Colour – UCL
Hollywood/Bollywood: Industries and Histories - UCL
Film Materiality - UCL
Film Technology and Aesthetics – St Andrews
Undergraduate Seminars
Colour Media - UCL
Modern British Sculpture - UCL
Asian Cinemas – St Andrews, co-convenor
Race and Representation – St Andrews, co-convenor
Classical Hollywood – Cambridge
Painting and Cinema –Yale, co-convenor
Undergraduate Lecture Courses
Global Film History and Historiography – St Andrews, convenor and co-instructor
Modern World Cinemas – St Andrews, co-instructor