Rate My Professor Jonathan Driskell

Dr. Jonathan Driskell is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Television and Screen Studies in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University Malaysia. He earned his PhD in Film Studies from King's College London in 2009, with a thesis titled Female Cinematic Stardom in 1930s French Film. He previously completed an MA in Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University in 2004, focusing on Bette Davis: Acting and Context, a BA Honours in Film and Video from the University of Wales in 2003, and a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education from Monash University Malaysia in 2015. Prior to joining Monash in May 2011, he served as a sessional lecturer at King's College London, Kingston University, and the University of Southampton, teaching film history, film authorship, gender representation in film, and 1930s French cinema. At Monash, he has held significant roles including Undergraduate Course Coordinator from 2012 to 2017, Deputy Head of School (Education) from 2018 to 2020, and Coordinator for Film, Television and Screen Studies from 2011 to 2021. He contributed to developing the Film and Television Studies curriculum, introducing the Major in Film, Television and Screen Studies in 2018, and teaches units such as Film, Television and Screen Studies: Forms (AMU1224), Film Histories: From 1895 to the Present (AMU2449), and Stardom: Celebrity, Society and Power (AMU3127).

Jonathan Driskell's research focuses on film history, film authorship, and star studies, particularly Southeast Asian cinema including the Malay cinema of the 1950s-1960s, and French cinema. He authored Marcel Carné, a study of the Poetic Realist director known for Les Enfants du Paradis (2011), and The French Screen Goddess: Film Stardom and the Modern Woman in 1930s France (2015). He edited Film Stardom in Southeast Asia, including his chapter on P. Ramlee, and co-edited The Malayan Emergency in Film, Literature and Art: Cultural Memory as Historical Other (2025, Bloomsbury Academic), with chapters Introduction: The Malayan Emergency in Cultural Memory - Film, Literature, and Art as Historical Other and Bukit Kepong: The Emergency in Mainstream Malaysian Cinema. Other publications include Rebel, playboy, hero: Jins Shamsuddin and Malay film stardom in the 1960s (2025, Celebrity Studies). In 2025, he received a HASS Internal Grant of RM30,000. Driskell has presented at conferences locally and internationally and appeared on BFM radio discussing P. Ramlee.