Nicholas Lee

My research is broadly focussed on marginality and ideological critique within the context of mainstream cultural institutions and forms. My PhD explored Marcel Duchamp's readymades as responses to the decline in traditional metaphysics within European easel painting. I am interested in the history of perspective in optical media and I am currently working on a project which analyses how these media are employed in the real-time simulations which make autonomous vehicles possible.

Since 2019 I have been co-editor of The Working-Class Avant-Garde, a special collection for Open Library of Humanities which focuses on the often overlooked contributions to arts and culture of working-class British artists and writers. My own published research in this area is concentrated on the writer and broadcaster Archie Hill (1928-86). In the field of Film Studies I have contributed articles to Sight and Sound, The Conversation and Time and Mind.  

I am interested in supervising MRes and PhD projects on American independent filmmaking, British working-class artists and writers, technologies of image-making and the illusion of three-dimensionality. 

My teaching is focussed on marginal and alternative forms of the moving image. I currently teach undergraduate modules on American Independent Cinema and Experimental Filmmaking. I have also supervised two Master's by Research projects: one exploring Hong Kong national identity on film, and another examining nostalgia for childhood in 'Indiewood' cinema.  

Since 2013 I have been a co-director of, and exhibitions curator for, the Peckham Pelican, a community-focussed exhibitions and events space, cafe and bar.  I am committed to community arts and grass-roots cultural projects, and through The Peckham Pelican I have, for example, facilitated The Uncorrected Independent Publishers' Fair (in collaboration with Tangerine Press), screenings for the Peckham and Nunhead Free Film Festival, and curated monthly exhibitions of local artists.

From 2011 to 2020 I was a researcher for Rt. Hon. Lord Norman Fowler, and from 2016-2020 whilst he was Lord Speaker in the House of Lords. My work in this time was focussed primarily on policy relating to HIV/AIDs.

I consider myself - for better or worse - to be an interdisciplinarian, having worked in the fields of film studies, art history, English literature, public health policy, and as a professional musician.