Yi Song

Biography

Background

Yi Song is a PhD student in Film Studies, funded by the Edinburgh Doctoral College Scholarship (2024-2028). Her doctoral project focuses on self-exposure, vulnerability and ethics in women filmmakers' first-person cinema. Yi was selected as "pensionnaire étranger" (2025-2026) at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). She serves as an editor and peer reviewer for academic journals, such as FORUM and Society & Animals.

 

Yi writes film reviews in Chinese, English and French, with work featured in Aside from Books and Strapontin. 

 

Qualifications

PhD in Film Studies, University of Edinburgh.

MPhil in Film and Screen Studies, Distinction, University of Cambridge.

BA in International Communications with French, First-Class Honours, University of Nottingham (Ningbo).

Research summary

Yi Song's doctoral research is titled "Women filmmakers’ self-exposure: vulnerability in the first-person cinema of Barbara Hammer, Chantal Akerman and Naomi Kawase". She is interested in visual culture, ethics, philosophy, and gender and queer theory. 

 

Academic Publication:

  • Song, Yi and Xinyi Wang. 2027. “Uncanny Visuality and Subversive Vagrancy: Urban Space in Leos Carax’s Les Amant du Pont-Neuf (1992) and Merde (2008)”. In ReFocus: The Film of Leos Carax, edited by James Slaymaker. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (forthcoming)

 

  • Song, Yi. 2026. “‘Our Bodies are Hydrophilic’: Queerness as Bodies of Water in Robin Campillo’s 120 BPM (2017)”. FORUM, no. 37. (forthcoming)

 

  • Song, Yi, Filippo Gilardi, and Celia Lam. 2023. “Building Culturally Sustainable Communities. Community Museums and Transmedia Storytelling.” Museum Management and Curatorship 39 (1): 2–19. doi:10.1080/09647775.2023.2209868.

 

Magazine

  • Song, Yi. 2026. “Virgin Turns: Female Body and Deviance [Virages, Vierges : Corps féminins et deviances]”. Strapontin, no. 12. 

 

Past research interests

MPhil Dissertation: "Intimacy and Absence: Children’s Mourning in Contemporary Francophone Cinema", the highest mark in the cohort.  BA Dissertation: "Isolation, Nihilism and Narcissism of Individuals: A Postmodern Perspective on Spike Jonze's Her (2013)", Best Dissertation Award.

Knowledge exchange

Yi co-curated Berlin’s first independent Chinese cinema week and organised a roundtable discussion on "female gaze and subaltern speak in contemporary China" on 19 November, 2022. Speakers include prof Xiang Biao, Dr Yunyun Zhou, prof Yu Qiong, Dr Heike Frick and independent filmmaker Chen Danting.

 

She has also worked as a film journalist and covered the 77th Cannes Film Festival. 

 

Current project grants

Edinburgh Doctoral College Scholarship (2024-2028).

Past project grants

The Society for French Studies Research Support Scheme (2025).
Postgraduate Research and Academic Award, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge (2023).
Dean's Scholarship, University of Nottingham (2021).

Papers delivered

  • "Spectral Ethics: The Cinematic Ghosts in the Work of Jacques Derrida and Chantal Akerman [Éthique spectrale : Les fantômes cinématographiques chez Jacques Derrida et Chantal Akerman]." Derrida hors-texte. École normale supérieure, 8 June 2026.

 

  • "Opacity of the Other, Chantal Akerman’s Intermedial Practices of Care." Intermediality and Care: An International and Interdisciplinary Workshop. University of Edinburgh, 12-13 March 2026.

 

  • "The Ethics of Self-Exposure: Viewing Vulnerability in Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015)." Ethics and Spectatorship in Film and Screen Media. University College Cork, 29-30 November 2025.

 

  • “Intimacy and Absence: Children’s Mourning in Petite Maman (2021) and Close (2022).” Film-Philosophy Conference 2025. University of Malta, 23-25 June, 2025. 

 

  • “Reimagining the Pont-Neuf: Uncanny Spectacles and Subversive Visuality in Les Amant du Pont-Neuf (1992) and The Pont-Neuf Wrapped (1975-1985).” The Society for French Studies Annual Postgraduate Conference: Conditions. Kings College London, 30 May 2025.

 

  • “The Ambivalence in Japan’s Postmodern Individualisation: Doppelgänger in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Films.” The Pan-Asian Quest for Cultural Authenticity: The Fantastic and the Folkloric in Film and the Creative Industries. University of Nottingham (Ningbo), 3-4 May, 2024.

 

  • “‘Our Bodies are Hydrophilic’: Queer Existence as Bodies of Water in Robin Campillo’s 120 BPM (2017).” ASMCF 2023: Reclaiming Spaces. Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, London, 7-8 September, 2023.

 

  • “Children, Time, and Mourning in Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021).” Film and Screen Studies MPhil Conference. University of Cambridge, 18 May, 2023.

 

  • “Articulating Community Memory through Participatory Art: Agnes Varda and JR.” Cambridge French Graduate Conference. University of Cambridge, 12-13 January, 2023.

 

  • “Agnes Varda’s Faces, Places (2017): Constructing the Site of Memory through Participatory Art.” Museum without Walls Conference. Queen’s University, Ontario, 15-17 August, 2022.

 

  • Song, Yi, Gilardi, Filippo and Celia Lam. “Building Community Museums: Transmedia Storytelling and Audience Engagement.” IAMCR 2022: Communication Research in the Era of Neo-Globalisation. Tsinghua University, Beijing, 11-15 July, 2022.

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