Rate My Professor Fincina Hopgood

Dr. Fincina Hopgood is a Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies in the Media and Communications Program within the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of New England, where she joined in 2016. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Cinema Studies from the University of Melbourne, with a thesis focused on empathy and portrayals of mental illness in Australian and New Zealand films from the 1990s, a Postgraduate Diploma in Cinema Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English and a Bachelor of Laws from the same university. Prior to UNE, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in film, television, and screen studies at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, and RMIT University. An experienced and award-winning teacher, she coordinates units including Australian Screens, Hollywood Cinema, Television Studies, Screen Adaptations, and Human Rights on Screen.

Dr. Hopgood's research specializations encompass portrayals of mental illness in film and television, contemporary Australian cinema, empathy and social change, mental health in the media, and human rights filmmaking and film festivals. She is authoring a monograph, Moving Images of Mental Illness on Australian Screens: The Shift Towards Empathy, for Palgrave Macmillan. Notable publications include the book chapter 'Of Mothers and Madwomen: Mining the Emotional Terrain of Toni Collette’s Anti-Star Persona' in American-Australian Cinema: Transnational Connections (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 'The Laughter and the Tears: Comedy, Melodrama and the Shift Towards Empathy for Mental Illness on Screen' in Australian Screen in the 2000s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and the refereed article 'Walking in Her Footsteps: Migration, Adaptation, and the Mother’s Journey in Romulus, My Father' in Adaptation (2016). Recent collaborative works feature 'Podcasts, mental health, and stigma: exploring motivations, behaviors, and attitudes among listeners' in Communication Studies (2023) and 'A new podcast for reducing stigma against people living with complex mental health issues: Co-design study' in JMIR Formative Research (2023). Her accolades include a 2014 Research Fellowship from the AFI Research Collection and Australian Film Institute with RMIT University, and a 2015 appointment as Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. She maintains an honorary fellowship in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, and served on the Public Stigma Technical Advisory Group for the National Mental Health Commission. Dr. Hopgood engages in interdisciplinary projects with organizations such as SANE Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive, and appears regularly on ABC radio discussing mental health representations in media.