Humanities and Social Sciences

Media Studies Program

Staff Directory

Sue Turnbull teaches courses on television, global media, and audience research and has published widely in these areas. Her research interests include Australian comedy, the history of Australian television and the television crime series as a genre.

She is a former President of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association and is co-editor of the on-line journal of reception studies, Participations. Sue also serves on the editorial board of a large number of international journals in the field of media and communications.

She is a co-convenor of the Australia wide readership network, Sisters in Crime Australia, chief crime fiction reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, and television reviewer for Radio National Breakfast. In 2009, she will be a Judge of the Premier's Literary Awards.

Some of her most recent publications include:

‘'It's like they threw a panther in the air and caught it in embroidery': Australian Television Comedy in Translation, Metro, No 159, (110-115), 2009.

(with Robyn Penman) Media Literacy: Concepts, Research & Regulatory Issues, Australian Communication and Media Authority, May 2008.

‘Mapping the Vast Australian Suburban Tundra: Australian Comedy from Dame Edna to Kath and Kim ‘International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11:1, March 2008 (15-32)

‘”They Stole Me: The OC, Masculinity and the Strategies of Teen TV’ in Teen Television: Essays on Programming and Fandom, eds Sharon Ross and Louisa Stein, Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland Press, 2008 (170-183).

‘Beyond Words: The Return of the King and the Pleasures of the Text’, in Martin Barker and Ernest Mathijs (eds), Watching Lord of the Rings: Tolkein’s World Audiences, Peter Lang Publishers 2008, (181-190).

‘The Hook and the Look: CSI and the Aesthetics of the Television Crime Series’ in M Allen (ed) Reading CSI: Crime Television Under the Microscope, London: I.B. Tauris 2007.

‘A Terrible Beauty: Thomas Harris, Red Dragon and the serial killer in crime fiction’ in Alan McKee (ed) Beautiful Objects, Oxford: Blackwell 2007 (49-63)