The fifth annual award sees Moving Image graduate win for her for her dissertation on ‘Young, queer and trivialised?’.

The University of Brighton’s LGBTQ Life Research Hub has awarded their annual undergraduate student final year dissertation / project prize to Daisy Weller for her dissertation exploring the characterisation of the young queer female in cinema.

Vice Chancellor Debra Humphris announced the prize and the committee said, “This is an inspiring dissertation offering a critical intervention into a much debated topic (cinematic representation of LBT women) from a fresh point of view that also takes into consideration the conditions of production.”

Matthew Noel Tod, Daisy’s tutor said “This is a fine dissertation, offering a comprehensive survey of the portrayal of adolescent queer female and trans characters, from the indie New Queer Cinema of the 1990s, to artists such as Sadie Benning up to the mainstream Hollywood and independent cinema of the past twenty years. Particularly incisive is the connection made towards the end between problematic representations and the conditions of production of the film, i.e. whether it is made by a queer-identified woman or by a straight man, with the voyeuristic elements this can imply. The issue of race is also woven in very skilfully and used to qualify even the more ‘successful’ or nuanced engagements with non-normative sexual identity, such as the exclusion of the African-American character in Boys Don’t Cry.”

Any final year dissertation or project, submitted to any department or program in the University of Brighton, is eligible if it addresses a topic relevant to lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender studies.