Dr Damien Pollard

Assistant Professor

School: Design Arts and Creative Industries

My research focuses on Italian cinema, horror cinema, film sound and popular African cinema. I'm particularly interested in how film sound brings together questions of films' industrial production and questions of film form, merging the contextual and the textual. Much of my work suggests that the study of film sound can therefore help us to better understand films' complex interactions with the social and historical contexts in which they were made. My monograph, Sounding Out the Giallo is forthcoming and my co-edited volume Film Exhibition: The Italian Context (with Edward Bowen, Legenda) will come out in 2024. Additional articles have appeared in Screen, Discourse, the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, Sound Studies and L’Avventura.

Prior to completing my PhD, I was a practicing non-fiction filmmaker and I specialised in making filsm for the medical and healthcare sectors. My current teaching spans film history, film theory and film practice.

Email Damien

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film, Pollard, D. 3 Nov 2025
Film Exhibition: The Italian Context, Pollard, D., Bowen, E. 2 Sep 2024
Introduction, Pollard, D., Bowen, E. 2 Sep 2024, Film Exhibition: The Italian Context, Cambridge, Legenda
Rendering the Umwelt: Foley, Animal Life and Ethics, Pollard, D. 17 Sep 2024, In: The Soundtrack
To the Cinema, and Beyond! Luigi Cozzi, Sci-Fi Exhibition and Starcrash, Pollard, D. 2 Sep 2024, Film Exhibition: The Italian Context, Cambridge, Legenda
Embalmed Air: The Case of the Cinematic Bubble, Pollard, D. 1 Mar 2023, In: Discourse
Notturno: An atmospheric aesthetic, Pollard, D. 1 Jun 2022, In: Journal of Italian Cinema Media Studies
“Can’t You Hear Me?” Ideologies of the Voice in Giallo Cinema, Pollard, D. 2020, In: Screen
Coherently Incoherent? Dario Argento’s Phenomena and the Influence of the Music Video, Pollard, D. 2020, In: L'avventura: International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes
Radio Alice and Italy's Movement of 1977: polyvocality, sonority and space, Pollard, D. 1 Jun 2020, In: Sound Studies

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: ‘Viva Voce! The Voice and Social History in the Sound Film’ 2025
Hosting an academic visitor: Lee Hardcastle 2024
Invited talk: ‘A Sound with Many Sources: The Political History of the Voice in Italian Cinema’ 2023
Invited talk: ‘Narrating Rome, Narrating in Rome: Voice-Overs, Failed Speech and Urban Space in Mario Bava and Dario Argento’s Early Gialli’ 2021
Invited talk: ‘“When the Time Comes, You’ll Know It by the Sound of My Voice”: Making Sense of the Voice in Giallo Cinema’ 2018