Dr Kaya Davies Hayon

Professional biography

My research examines the intersections of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in contemporary Arab film and visual cultures. My first monograph, Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Film, was published in 2018 as part of Bloomsbury’s Thinking Cinema series. This book interweaves corporeal phenomenology with theological and feminist scholarship from the Arab world to argue that contemporary Maghrebi cinema represents the body as a site through which subjectivity and self-other relations are constituted and experienced.

Alongside this monograph, I have published a number of articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed film journals and edited collections, and have co-edited a special issue of Alphaville on ‘Refugee Filmmaking’. More recently, I have worked, with Dr Stefanie Van De Peer (QMU), on a collection on Transnational Arab Stardom: Glamour, Performance and Politics (Bloomsbury 2024). Structured chronologically and thematically, this collection highlights and explores Arab film, screen and music stars through a transnational and interdisciplinary set of contributions that draw on feminist, performance and film theories, media studies, sound studies, material culture, queer and celebrity studies. I am currently working on a book (authored with Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, UTS) on Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022). This book explores the film’s formal, thematic and social dimensions, arguing that it raises wide-ranging questions about motherhood, justice, race, embodiment and the enduring power of mythology.

I am also interested in the uses, value and ethics of participatory film and photography in Global South contexts. In 2019, I was awarded funding (Emerald Publishing Interdisciplinary Research Fund impact award) to work with a team of UK-based scholars, researchers from the University of Hassan II, a Moroccan NGO and participatory photographers to develop a creative intervention that examines the impact of climate change on Amazigh women in Morocco. That same year, I attended a BA-AAH knowledge exchange forum and was awarded seed funding to produce a short film about gender, indigeneity and political empowerment in Morocco, Samoa and Malaysia. I am currently working with Tom Martin (University of Lincoln) and Michelle Walsh (University of Lincoln) to produce a photobook about this work, which we hope to preview at COP 2024.

I have taught undergraduate and postgraduate film courses on filmmaking from the Global South, focusing primarily on regional cinemas from the Arab world, and on non-Western theories and aesthetics. In my work in the third sector, I ran online training courses and created materials for distance learners. I have also developed a number of arts-based student teaching initiatives.

At the OU, I am the Module Team Chair for our L1 Film & Media introductory module. I am also the lead investigator on a FASSTEST scholarship project that seeks to embed inclusivity and accessibility into this module’s design by involving students from global majority backgrounds and/or with a disability in a process of co-design.

I have curated a number of film screenings and programmes at various different arts venues across the UK. In 2019, I co-curated an exhibition, There’s No Place Like Home: Migration, Detention and the Arts, at Mansions of the Future (Lincoln), which featured the first UK preview of award-winning Australian-Iranian artist Hoda Afshar’s multimedia work Remain. A later iteration of the event held in Canning Town (London) included an artist’s talk with Behrouz Boochani, a spoken word recital by Lemn Sissay, live theatrical performances, and participatory workshops with the local community. I have also organised a number of arts-based public engagement initiatives.  

I regularly collaborate externally with both academic and non-academic partners. I am currently working with external academic colleagues on the projects mentioned above, and in the capacity of an Advisor for the participatory arts charity People United.

I am working internationally with colleagues based at the University of Hassan II in Morocco and the University of Technology in Sydney. I am co-chair of the Institute for Languages, Cultures and Societies’ ‘Conversations on Fieldwork’ seminar series, which draws together collaborators from across the globe. I have also been invited to act as a member of the project team for MigraMedia, a €400,000 ERASMUS+ project looking at migration in the media run by Prof Markus Heide (Stiftung Universität Hildesheim).