Keynotes and plenaries

  • Plenary: ‘Activist Horror Film: Vegan-Feminism and Melanie Light’s The Herd’, Horror as a Framework for Reflecting Our Contemporary World, University of Leeds, June 2019. 
  • Keynote: ‘Splatter in the Living Room: Fangoria and the Origins of Made-for-Video Horror, 1982-90’, ‘It Is True, We Shall Be Monsters’: New Perspectives on Horror, Science Fiction and the Monstrous Onscreen, De Montfort University, 13 June 2018.
  • Keynote: ‘Easy-to-make Money Machines: Making and Marketing Exploitation Films in the Early 2000s’, Exploitation Cinema in the 21st Century, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, 9 June 2017.
  • Plenary roundtable: ‘Transnational monsters’, Transnational Monstrosity, York St John University, UK, 7 June 2017.
  • Keynote: ‘The Macabre Video Underground: Historicising the Subcultural Value of Real Death Imagery’, Spectacular Now!: the Politics of the Contemporary Spectacle, Technischen Universität Dortmund, Germany, 11-12 November 2016.

Invited presentAtions

  • 'Cheap as folk: amateur British horror films at the dawn of the video era', International Symposium: Transnational Horror, Folk Lore, and Cultural Politics, Nottingham Trent University, May 2022.
  • 'Cheap and nasty? British horror films and the global video cassette market in the 1980s', Kurja Polt Festival 9 (Slovenia), April 2022.
  • 'Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film', public lecture, delivered at Paracinema Festival, Derby Quad, September 2021 and at the Abertoir International Horror Film Festival, November 2021.
  • ‘Less Punk, More Splatter: The hard-rock horror fiction of Shaun Hutson’, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies (Spring Term), May 2021.
  • ‘Borderline Nasties: Market Rationalisation and the Promotional Strategies of CBS/Fox Video, 1982-84’, University of Leicester, December 2018.
  • ‘American Video Horror in the 1980s’, Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Germany, November 2018.
  • ‘The Way to Blockbuster: the British Video Superstore, 1986-92’, King’s College London, Film Studies Seminar Series, December 2017.
  • ‘Building media histories through archival research’, guest lecture on the MA Film and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, March 2017. 
  • ‘Real and Realist Horrors’, guest lecture on the undergraduate module ‘Theorising Spectatorship’, Anglia Ruskin University, October 2016.
  • ‘Real death and horror film culture’, Offscreen Film Festival, Cinema Nova, Brussels, March 2016.
  • ‘Distributing British horror films in the 21st century’, guest lecture on the undergraduate module ‘Horror and the Gothic’, University of Warwick, February 2016.
  • ‘Video nicies: rethinking the relationship between children and video entertainment in 1980s Britain’, Birmingham City University—Centre for Media and Cultural Research Seminar Series, February 2016.
  • ‘Contemporary British Horror Cinema’, Abertoir International Horror Film Festival, Aberystwyth, November 2015.
  • ‘British horror in the Doghouse’, Falmouth University, April 2015.
  • ‘From the makers of The Woman in Black: Hammer Films and contemporary horror cinema', University of Kent, CISFMI Research Seminar, February 2015.
  • ‘Long time dead?: British horror cinema in the new millennium’, University of Sunderland, February 2014.
  • ‘Nasty visions: British horror cinema and the legacy of the video nasty’, Newcastle University, May 2010.

SELECT Conference presentations

Johnny has delivered papers at over 35 conferences and academic/public engagement events since beginning his PhD in 2009. Find below a selected list of talks delivered over the last five years.
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  • 'Hammer and Beyond... and Beyond', Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (invited roundtable participant), Sheraton Chicago, April 2022. Research supported by the AHRC.
  • ‘Flesh to bones: Horror and “the new film history”’, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (invited roundtable participant), Sheraton Chicago, April 2020 (rescheduled 2021 due to Covid-19).
  • ‘Borderline Nasties: Market Rationalisation and the Promotional Strategies of CBS/Fox Video, 1982-84’, International Association for Media and History Biannual Conference, Northumbria University, July 2019.
  • ‘Exploitation video: Thinking beyond “cult movie” discourse’, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference (invited roundtable participant), Sheraton Seattle, April 2019.
  • ‘Transnational splatter cinema and the birth of the “shot on video” horror movie’, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Sheraton Toronto, March 2018.
  • ‘Award-winning Sex Sells: British adult video’s quest for quality, 1978-85’, Screen, University of Glasgow, June 2017.
  • ‘A golden age of exploitation? British video culture beyond the video nasties’, Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Hilton Atlanta, March 2016.