Yi Song
PhD supervisors:
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 currently serves as an assistant editor for FORUM: The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts.
Yi earned an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies with Distinction at the University of Cambridge. Before that, she graduated with First Class Honours in International Communications (with French) at the University of Nottingham (Ningbo).
Qualifications
PhD in Film Studies, University of Edinburgh, 2024-ongoing.
MPhil in Film and Screen Studies, University of Cambridge.
BA in International Communications with French, 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
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Intimacy and Absence: Children’s Mourning in Petite Maman (2021) and Close (2022). Film-Philosophy Conference 2025. University of Malta, 23-25 June, 2025.
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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.
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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.
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Children, Time, and Mourning in Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021). Film and Screen Studies MPhil Conference. University of Cambridge, 18 May, 2023.
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Articulating Community Memory through Participatory Art: Agnes Varda and JR. Cambridge French Graduate Conference. University of Cambridge, 12-13 January, 2023.
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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.
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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.