DrBelinda Middleweek

Belinda Middleweek is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication, the Teaching and Learning Lead for Journalism, and the acting Higher Degree Research Coordinator in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Belinda’s research examines the role of human bodily engagement with digital technologies. She is especially interested in how we impose human form and human values on those technologies; how we socially and culturally position those technologies (e.g., in terms of gender); how we talk about and represent those technologies in news media; and how we interact with and (sometimes) establish emotional, intimate or affective bonds with those technologies, and the social and ethical implications of those interactions. This work sits at the intersection of scholarship in human-machine communication (HMC), media studies, digital intimacy and journalism studies and informed her co-authored book with Emeritus Professor John Tulloch, Real Sex Films: The New Intimacy and Risk in Cinema (2017, OUP), which examined practitioner and audience engagements with filmic texts, offering a new interdisciplinary approach to analysing this controversial cinematic movement. The book was described by Professor Mark Deuze as an important intervention in the field: “Media studies desperately needs more rainbow scholarship like the impeccable work Tulloch and Middleweek have done here, especially on experiences that are so central to the human condition: intimacy, desire, and sex" (back-cover).

Her research on embodied AI has been publicised on television, in radio and print, the subject of invited presentations (e.g., New York University), conferences, industry panel events, and presented at public fora such as the Sydney Vivid Festival (2019). In 2018, Belinda was awarded an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship and held visiting scholar positions at City University, London and the Danish School of Media and Journalism (DMJX) where she delivered presentations on human-robot relationships – a notable contribution to a nascent field of AI. She was invited to present this research at the University of Amsterdam (UVA) and the University of California Berkeley as part of the ‘Commons Conversations’ new media lecture series. The latter was publicised in a blog on the UC Berkeley news media channel and described as “provocative scholarship” and delivered to “a full-house audience”. She was subsequently invited to take up a six-month visiting scholar appointment at UC Berkeley in the Berkeley Centre for New Media (BCNM), which was deferred due to COVID-19 border closures. Belinda was also a member of the UTS Expert Working Group on Human Rights and AI that, in March 2020, made recommendations to the Australian Human Rights Commission for its Discussion Paper on Human Rights and Technology. 

Belinda’s interest in bodily engagements with digital technologies originated during her PhD research, where she explored the emotionally charged, mediated public dialogue surrounding the Chamberlain case—a landmark Australian media event—and examined how it shaped public perceptions and influenced legal processes. Her research led to invited consultancy work for the New York Times online documentary The Retro Report, a co-produced radio documentary for the ABC’s Media Report, an invited presentation to the National Museum of Australia and various television, radio and print media interviews. Her expertise in this area was a driving force in the major publication to arise from her thesis, the monograph Feral Media? The Chamberlain case, 40 years on (2021). The book was described by Emeritus Professor Graham Seal AM as “deeply researched, well-written, convincingly argued… it deserves to be widely read” (back-cover, Seal 2021) and by Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner in his review of the book for Media International Australia as “an interesting and original account of this story and its continuing resonance within Australian cultural history’ (Turner, 2021). Belinda’s research is used to define “trial by media” processes on Wikipedia and has been used by NSW High School students as a resource in the HSC subjects History Extension and Society and Culture. She was one of five academics invited to appear on the Seven Network’s prime-time television special “10 to 1: Countdown our greatest news” (2016). Featuring experts analysing the most significant news events reported on Australian television, it was described by news anchor Mark Ferguson as “a panel of Australia’s top media academics”.

Before moving to academia, Belinda worked as a news producer for Australia’s top rating breakfast television programs Sunrise and The Morning Show and for the nightly current affairs program Today Tonight (Seven Network). She has a background as an associate producer, field producer and researcher on investigative documentaries for Beyond International, Shadow Productions, Graham McNeice Productions, Mullion Creek Productions and iKandy Films.