Claire Gray – originally from Ottawa – is currently completing a doctoral degree programme in film studies at the University of Edinburgh. Although film is central to her doctoral studies, her programme is uniquely interdisciplinary – leveraging and contributing to research from across the fields of film studies, cultural studies, and music. More specifically, her doctoral project seeks to create a new methodology to study the everyday impacts of Brexit. Claire achieves this by using the soundscapes present in contemporary social-realist films to explore how social classes have become increasingly divided and mistrusting of the government in the United Kingdom. She argues that the sounds heard in these films represent how social classes are increasingly divided. She tests this hypothesis by engaging with unions and working-class community groups in Edinburgh on issues of representation.
Prior to beginning her doctoral degree, Claire completed a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Media Studies at Queen’s University at Kingston and a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. During these programmes, she began the work that ultimately inspired her doctoral project. At Concordia, she studied how sound and music in Québécois coming-of-age films demonstrate the confusion that young people in Quebec experience when they realise their national identities in a time of social and political turmoil. She also studied how sound in Indigenous cinema can demonstrate a seemingly invisible social marginalization.
Claire’s work on sound is fresh and innovative and offers applications for both Canadian and British societies. She is already actively employing Canadian examples in her contemplation of the future effects of Brexit, given the relevance of Quebec’s experience with unstable periods of changing national identities. As well, her doctoral project will provide an accessible way for Canadians to understand the implications of Brexit and its local, national, and international ramifications.
Further, Claire continues to engage actively with researchers in Canada discussing issues of Indigenous and Québécois identity. She does this through participating in working groups and by writing research papers with academics at Canadian universities. She also has a goal of building a network of researchers to further the academic literature on the bridge between soundscapes and social change.
