Dr Cecilia Stenbom

My research explores media-saturated, consumer-driven everyday environments and the ways in which public, institutional, and domestic spaces shape identity, belonging, and social behaviour. Through moving image practice, I examine how everyday rituals, interpersonal interactions, and unspoken social protocols reveal broader social structures.

I am increasingly interested in the relationship between image and sound, and in how sonic environments shape perception, narrative, and embodied experience. My recent projects explore the sonification of biometric data as a means of representing internal states and as a narrative device in filmmaking. I approach sound not simply as accompaniment to the image, but as an active agent in the construction of meaning, atmosphere, and audience engagement.

My work is grounded in creative practice research, employing observational filmmaking, semi-scripted performance, participatory methods, and hybrid forms that combine documentary and fiction. These approaches position moving image practice as a mode of enquiry, using creative experimentation to investigate lived experience while challenging established screen conventions and film production methodologies.

 

Selected Projects

Heat (in development)

Heat reimagines domestic cooking as an embodied site of everyday crisis within working single-parent households. The project combines narrative filmmaking and experimental sound design into a sensory cinematic form.

Weight (in production)

Weight explores the physical and psychological intensity of weightlifting through the integration of EMG biometric data and sonification. The project investigates the relationship between physiological measurement, embodied experience, and artistic expression.

Freedom to Move (2025)

Freedom to Move follows blind footballer Rainbow Mbuangi, exploring everyday routines and the role of sound as a primary means of navigating, interpreting, and experiencing the world. The film premiered at Inclús, Barcelona International Disability Film Festival.

Radio Off (2023)

Radio Off is an installation that documents and reimagines the daily commute as an “anti-road movie.” Through repetition, duration, and attention to the mundane, the work reveals the social and psychological conditions embedded within everyday mobility.

Bad News (2021–2023)

Supported by Arts Council England’s Develop Your Creative Practice award, Bad News explored the application of applied theatre methodologies within corporate management training.

diem (2019)

An experimental observational documentary developed through Connect/Exchange, a residency programme initiated by Northern Film & Media and hosted by Chapter Arts, Cardiff. diem examines institutional spaces and the individuals within them, revealing the unwritten structures, social interactions, and poetic qualities of everyday environments.

Rules of Engagement (2018)

Rules of Engagement is a narrative short film based on lived experiences, exploring unwritten social protocols through three interconnected vignettes. Supported by Arts Council England the work has been screened and exhibited nationally and internationally, including Innsbruck International Contemporary Biennial of the Arts (2020).

Parallel (2017)

Parallel is an experimental short film exploring cultural connections between North East England and West Sweden through a cinematic exchange. The work reimagines scenes from television and film across geographical contexts and was exhibited as part of Somewhere Becoming Sea, curated by Film & Video Umbrella for Hull City of Culture.

 

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Radio Off, Stenbom, C. 1 Nov 2024, In: Sightlines Journal
• Bad News: Film and Critical Statement, Stenbom, C., Young, B. 29 Jun 2023, In: Screenworks
• Bad News, Stenbom, C., Young, B., Gardner, N., Elliott, A., Dellow, J., Connolly, M., Dalesman, E., Ludbrook, A., Eyres, J., Gibson, C., O'Hare, D. 23 Jan 2023
• ‘Lacking’ subjects: challenging the construction of the ‘empowered’ graduate in museum, gallery and heritage studies, Coffield, E., Markham, K., Crosby, J., Stenbom, C., Antoniou, M. 1 Apr 2023, In: Arts and Humanities in Higher Education
• Radio off, Stenbom, C. 17 Feb 2023
• Diem, Stenbom, C. 16 Nov 2019
• Rules of engagement: investigating the transformation of unwritten social protocols into screen-based representations through hybridity and liminal practices, Stenbom, C. 2019
• BEAM REACH BLASTING, Stenbom, C. 10 Feb 2018
• Rules of Engagement, Stenbom, C. 31 Jan 2018
• Parallel, Stenbom, C. 26 Aug 2016

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Participating in a conference, workshop, ...: International Network of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking Conference 2026
• Other: What Are Words Worth? 2024
• Other: Switch 2023 2023
• Other: Radio Off 2023
• Other: London Short Film Festival 2023 - Cues for The Inbetween 2023
• Visiting an external academic institution: University of Gothenburg 2022
• Other: Dark Matter 2021
• Invited talk: Mapping Gateshead: Past Creative and Cultural Landscapes 2021
• Other: Reel People - interview for podcast 2020
• Other: Human Capital Innsbruck International Biennale for the Arts 2020

• Nikola Markoviç Ghost-Dressing: Conjuring, Re-Embodying, and Animating Spectral Garments of the Family Archive Start Date: 20/04/2026
• Sarah Bell Changing bodies, changing attitudes: Exploring historic and contemporary representations of women and the menopause experience in American and European horror films from The Leech Woman (Edward Dein, 1960) to The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024). Start Date: 18/12/2025

Art PhD July 23 2019