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Dr Melissa Shani Brown is a recipient of an Ulam NAWA Fellowship, for her research project ‘Complex(ifying) routes/roots: the politics of ‘shared heritage’ as histories of trade in European museums’. This project explores the conceptualisation of ‘shared heritage’, museum spaces as communicative media, and the representation of transnational histories within Europe.

She was previously affiliated with Ruhr University Bochum in Germany (2019-2023), and before that she was based at the University of Nottingham’s China campus (2013-2019), where she was an Assistant Professor in Media and Cultural Studies in the School of International Communications.

She received her PhD in Critical Theory from the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom) in 2013, with a thesis entitled ‘Cartographies of Silence: Mapping Concepts of Silence and their Contexts’.

Interdisciplinary in both research interests and training, her work explores the commodification of cultural heritage in tourism, the conceptualisation of identities, ethnic cultures in China (specifically in the Xinjiang region), as well as the representation of gender, sexualities, and race in texts and popular media.

Her research has appeared in China Quarterly, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Asian Ethnicity, Continuum, and Culture, Theory and Critique, among others.

She has co-authored two books: with David O’Brien, ‘People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China: Territories of Identity’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); and with Thomas Whyke, ‘Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai: Querying the Strange Tales’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • The communication of cultural heritage in tourism and museums
  • Representations and theories of identity
  • Qualitative research methodologies

PUBLICATIONS

Books

  • O’Brien, David and Brown, Melissa Shani. 2022. People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China: Territories of Identity. Palgrave Macmillan: London. ISBN 9789811937750
  • Whyke, Thomas and Brown, Melissa Shani. 2023. Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai: Querying the Strange Tales. Palgrave Macmillan: London. ISBN: 978-981-99-4257-2

Journal Articles

  • Brown, M. S. and Roberts, J. 2023. Figuring it out: ‘confusing’ non-binary gender in Runaways and The Order of the Stick. Continuum: Journal of Media & Culture, Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2023.2272566
  • Brown, M. S. and O’Brien D. 2022. ‘Making the Past Serve the Present: The Testimonial Tourist Gaze and Infrastructures of Memory in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), China. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Sage. DOI:10.1177/18681026221121828
  • Whyke, T. Lopez, J. and Brown, M. S. 2021. Contemporizing the National Style in Chinese Animation: The Case of Nezha (2019). Animation, Sage. DOI: 10.1177/17468477211049354
  • Brown, M. S. and Lam, C. 2021. Introduction to playces: special issue on spaces of play. Culture, Theory and Critique, Taylor and Francis. DOI:10.1080/14735784.2021.1993078
  • Brown, M. S. 2021. Heterophotographies: Play, Power, Privilege, and Spaces of Otherness in Chinese Tourist Photography. Culture, Theory and Critique, Taylor and Francis. DOI:10.1080/14735784.2021.1943698.
  • Brown, M. S. and Roberts, J. 2021. ‘Orgies in the Garden of Heaven’ – The Pornographic Playground of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's 'Lost Girls'. Culture, Theory and Critique, Taylor and Francis.   DOI:10.1080/14735784.2021.1955719
  • Whyke, T. and Brown, M.S. 2021. Becoming-Perverse: Queering Sworn Brotherhood in the Non/Human Realm of Songzhuxuan’s Hailiwa and Daokousu. Journal of Homosexuality, Taylor and Francis. DOI:10.1080/00918369.2021.1912556
  • Brown, M.S. and Partridge, N. L. 2021. Strangely Like a Person: Cole and the queering of asexuality in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Sexuality and Culture, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/s12119-020-09806-5
  • Whyke, T. and Brown, M.S. 2020. The Face of the Non/Human: Human-Animal Encounters in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi. Animals and Society, Brill. DOI:10.1163/15685306-bja10031
  • Brown, M. S. and O’Brien, D. 2019. ‘Defining the Right Path’: Aligning Islam with Chinese Socialist Core Values at the Ningbo Old Mosque. Asian Ethnicity. Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2019.1636637
  • Zhang, X., Brown, M. S. and O’Brien, D. 2018. ‘No CCP, No New China’: discourses of pastoral power in China. The China Quarterly. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/S0305741018000954.
  • Roberts, J. and Brown, M. S. 2018. ‘What Have We Got to Lose?’ Feminist campaigning and the exclusion of sex from the supermarket. Porn Studies, Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2018.1493950
  • Brown, M. S., Evers, C., Fleming, D. H., Gilardi, F., Reid, J. 2018. Transmedial Projects, Scholarly Habitus, and Critical Know-How in a British University in China. The International Journal of Transmedia Literacy. DOI: 10.7358/ijtl-2017-003-gila

Journal Special Issue:

  • Brown, M. S. and Lam, C. (guest editors) 2021. Special Issue: Playces – Spaces of Play. Culture, Theory and Critique, Taylor and Francis. DOI:10.1080/14735784.2021.1993078

Book Chapters

  • Whyke, T. and Brown, M.S. 2023. ‘Re-animating Chinese myths: mythology and/as mythologies in Contemporary Chinese Animation’. in Schultz, C. (ed.) Chinese Film in the 21st Century: Movements, Genres, Intermedia. Routledge: London.  DOI:10.4324/9781003371694-10
  • O’Brien, D. and Brown, M. S. 2022. ‘Becoming Chinese: Sinicization, Nation, and Race in Xinjiang, China’. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-1333.
  • Brown, M. S. and O’Brien, D. 2021. ‘Imagined Minorities: ‘making real’ images of ethnic harmony in Chinese tourism’. In Rawnsley, G., Pothong, K. and Ma, Y. (eds) The Handbook of Political Propaganda. Edward Elgar Publishing. DOI: 10.4337/9781789906424.00028
  • Brown, M. S. and O’Brien, D. 2021. ‘‘Whose China Dream is it Anyway?’: temporalities of ‘ethnicity’ in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang’ in Farley, J. (ed) Redefining “Propaganda” in Modern China: Movements, Policies, Producers, and Aesthetics, 1949-2012. Routledge: London. DOI: 10.4324/9780429296505-17
  • Brown M. S. and O’Brien D. 2020. ‘‘The Significance of Silence’: variations in perceptions and experiences of ‘silence’ in international classroom settings’ in Dervin, F. (ed) International Students’ Academic Experience: The example of Chinese Higher Education in the ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative Era. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780367459246
  • Brown, M.S. and O’Brien, D. 2020 ‘Ethnic Heritage on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang’. in Ludwig, C., Walton, L., & Wang, Y. (Eds.) The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage. Amsterdam University Press. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv131bsxp.15.

Contact: 

Faculty of International and Political Studies, Władysława Reymonta, room 123.