Professor Sue Turnbull

Office: 19.2098
Phone: 02 42392392
E-Mail: sturnbul@uow.edu.au

Biography

My research interests include the history of television as a medium; its various forms and its social role in a range of diverse locations and times; the history of Australian screen comedy and the television crime show as a genre.  I am also interested in various aspects of media audience research and digital literacy and have an-ongoing concern with media education at all levels of the curriculum.  Another strand of my research involves representations of crime in the media, including crime fiction.

I am currently Editor of the ‘A’ ranked academic journal Media International Australia (http://www.uq.edu.au/mia/) and co-editor with Professor Martin Barker at the University of Aberystwyth  of Participations: The Journal of Audience and Reception Studies (http://www.participations.org/)

I am a frequent media commentator and columnist; from 2007-2010 I was television reviewer for ABC Radio National Breakfast; I currently have a regular slot on ABC Radio Canberra Drive and am Chief Crime fiction reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald.  Since 1992, I have also been a co-convenor of Sisters in Crime Australia, a network of readers and writers of crime fiction and have hosted many of their events over the last two decades.  (http://www.sistersincrime.org.au/).

Research Profile

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date >>

Selected Publications (2006-2011)

Books

Rhonda Wilcox, Sue Turnbull  (eds) , Investigating Veronica Mars, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Press, 2011

Research Reports

Robyn Penman and Sue Turnbull, Media Literacy: Concepts, Research & Regulatory Issues, Australian Communication and Media Authority, Australian Government, July 2007.

Books Currently in Preparation

• Kate Darian Smith and Sue Turnbull (eds), Remembering Television, Cambridge Scholarly Press,  (Contract Delivery Date July 2011)
• Sue Turnbull, The Television Crime Drama, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,  (Contract Delivery date December 2011).
• Susan Bye, Felicity Collins and Sue Turnbull, Australian Screen Comedy, (July 2011)
• Melissa Gregg, Sue Turnbull and Jason Wilson (eds) Underbelly: A Critical Companion,

Book Chapters

• Turnbull, Sue.  Performance in Veronica Mars’ in Rhonda Wilcox and Sue Turnbull;, Investigating Veronica Mars, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Press, 2010.
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘“Veronica Mars”, in The Essential Cult Television Reader  David Lavery (ed) University of Kentucky Press, 2010 (314-321).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘Imagining the Audiences’ (Major revision) in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (eds), Media and Communication in Australia,  Sydney:  Allen and Unwin, 2009 (65-78).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘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: Tolkien’s World Audiences, Peter Lang Publishers 2008, (181-190).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘Understanding Disappointment: The Australian Book Lovers and Adaptation’, in Martin Barker and Ernest Mathijs (eds), Watching Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s World Audiences, Peter Lang Publishers 2008, (103-110)
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘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, (15-35).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘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).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘Audiences’ (revised) in Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner (eds), Media and Communication in Australia,  Sydney:  Allen and Unwin, 2006 (78-93).

Refereed Articles

• Turnbull, Sue ‘Crime as Entertainment’, Continuum, 24:6, November 2010,
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘Wagon Train to the Stars:  the Past, Present and Future of Communication Research in Australia, Media International Australia, No 136, August 2010 (20-26)
• Turnbull, Sue.  ‘Missing in Action: On the Invisibility of Most Australian Television’, Critical Studies in Television, 5:1, Spring 2010 (111-121).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘The Long Tail of Mother and Son: The Transnational Career of an Australian Situation Comedy, Media International Australia, February, No 134, 2010 (96-108).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘”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).
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘'It's like they threw a panther in the air and caught it in embroidery': Australian Television Comedy in Translation, Metro, No 159, December 2008 (110-115).  
• Turnbull, Sue. ‘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).
• Bye, Susan, F. Collins and S.Turnbull, ‘Comic Interventions: Aunty Jack, Norman Gunston and ABC-TV’,  Australian Cultural History, Number 26, 2007 (131-152).
• Turnbull, Sue, ‘Teaching for the Revolution: The Long March of Media Studies’, Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 120, November 2006 (181-190).

ARC Discovery Projects

• 2008-2012 Australian Television and Popular Memory, with Distinguished Professor John. Hartley, Distinguished Professor Graeme Turner, Professor Alan. McKee,  Associate-Professor Chris Healy.
• 2006-8  ARC Discovery Grant, Australian Screen Comedy, with Dr Felicity Collins and Dr Susan Bye.

Postgraduate Supervision

Before relocating to the University of Wollongong in February 2011,  I supervised 16 Ph.D theses, 24 Masters theses and 17 Honours theses and have been an external marker for 28 research theses.

Currently, I am an external supervisor for a creative thesis with Felicity Packard at the University of Canberra on the Underbelly adaptations.