Professor Jackie Stacey elected Fellow of the British Academy

17 Jul 2026

Jackie Stacey, Professor of Cultural Studies, has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy, one of the highest honours awarded to scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

Jackie is among 92 distinguished academics made Fellows by the British Academy in 2026. The Fellowship recognises her outstanding contributions to research and scholarship in the field of gender and sexuality studies for more than four decades and reflects both her international influence in the field of cultural studies and the University’s continued excellence in humanities research.

Since joining Manchester in 2007, Jackie has built an internationally recognised body of work across cultural studies, gender and sexuality, , film theory and the visual arts. She is currently Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC).

Her academic journey began in the 1980s as a postgraduate student at the University of Kent, where she studied for the UK’s first Women’s Studies MA, and later as a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. During this period, she also co-taught adult education classes for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), including pioneering lesbian and gay studies courses.

She has built a body of work influencing cultural, feminist and media and film studies. Her key publications include Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (1994), Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer (1997), Global Nature, Global Culture (2000), and The Cinematic Life of the Gene (2010). She has also co-edited important collections in feminism, screen studies and queer theory.

Jackie has worked for more than three decades to establish interdisciplinary research centres and teaching programmes in gender and sexuality, forming international academic collaborations and partnerships with Manchester’s civic and arts organisations. Her research in film and visual culture aims to link aesthetics and politics to social change using feminist and queer frameworks.

Alongside her research, Jackie has made a significant contribution to academic publishing and scholarly leadership. She served as co-editor of the journal Screen from 1994 to 2024 and was co-editor of Feminist Theory between 2006 and 2012. Having qualified as a Groupwork Practitioner, with Group Analysis North in 2018, she has introduced new pedagogic methods into the classroom and the postgraduate annual Sexuality Summer School at Manchester, which she has led since 2008.

Jackie said: “I am delighted and honoured to become a Fellow of the British Academy. It is wonderful to see feminist and queer interdisciplinary research on culture recognised in this way, and it is testament to the collaborative work done by colleagues and postgraduates in the Department of English, American Studies and Creative Writing in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, without whom this would not have been possible.”

Professor Maggie B Gale, Faculty of Humanities Vice-Dean for Research, said: “We are so very pleased that Jackie has been awarded this Fellowship. It is richly deserved and we offer our congratulations across the Humanities at the University and especially from all her colleagues in SALC.”

The British Academy is the UK's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Fellowship is awarded to scholars who have achieved distinction in their field and represents one of the most prestigious accolades available to researchers in these disciplines.