Dr Sarah Arnold

    Media Studies, Motherhood Project, Arts and Humanities Institute

    Head of the Department of Media Studies
    Associate Professor

    Iontas
    Ground Floor
    0.20

    Biography

    I joined Maynooth University's Department of Media in September 2016 and am currently Head of Department. I previously worked at the school of Film & Television at Falmouth University in the UK. I received my PhD from NUI Galway's Huston School of Film & Digital Media in 2010. 

    At Maynooth University, I teach across the BA in Media Studies and the MA in Critical and Creative Media on subjects ranging from television studies to screen production.

    I am co-PI of the Women in Focus project - an IRC/AHRC Digital Humanities funded project investigating women's amateur filmmaking. I'm also a researcher on the MotherNet project, an interdisciplinary project that builds research capacity across three European universities through the topic of 'narratives of motherhood'. I'm also a researcher on the GEMINI project, a pan-European collaboration aimed at tackling gender stereotypes by engaging high school students with serial drama's representation of gender issues. I currently supervise 3 PhDs and 2 postdocs. 

    My research is more generally concerned with cultural production, from women's role in film and television practice to new entrants' experience of media and creative work. 

    I welcome enquiries from people interested in pursuing PhDs or postdoctoral projects on topics in these areas. 

    Research Projects

    Title Role Description Start date End date Amount
    Locating & Narrating Women's Amateur Filmmaking in the IFI Irish Film Archive PI Strand 1a The Irish Film Archive (IFA) is home to Irish amateur film collections from the past century. These films provide a rich visual narrative of our past. However, unlike professional films held the archives, little is known about the filmmakers. This is especially the case of female amateur filmmakers whose work is rendered invisible since little data on the filmmakers and their background is provided. This project aims to address this lack of knowledge and understanding of women's amateur filmmaking practices and styles in Ireland. Collaboration between the researcher and the IFA will involve the identification of collections of films made by women, production of a series of case studies representative of the diversity of women's amateur filmmaking practice, and systematic research of the women's backgrounds, personal information, and filmmaking style and form. This research enables the Irish Film Archive to produce detailed records and narratives of women amateur filmmakers that will help present a fuller and richer story of Irish filmmaking to the public. 01/12/2021 01/09/2022 11433
    The Invisible Women - Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing PI UK Grant Number AH/W001756/1’ 01/08/2021 31/07/2023 128277.73
    GEMINI PI 09/01/2023 08/01/2025 78635.82
    Scenes from the West: Archiving and Understanding the West of Ireland Through Early Home Movies, 1930-1970 - Carolann Madden PI Postdoctoral candidate: Carolann Madden Mentor: Sarah Arnold Abstract: This project interrogates and analyses archival holdings of early 20th century amateur footage of the West of Ireland taken between the 1930’s-1970’s, a period which marks the initial rise in film and camera accessibility in Ireland. Having been inspiration for numerous artists and the subject of myriad tourism campaigns, the West of Ireland has a rich history of visual representation but studies of it have largely overlooked the moving image. This study aims to address this by centring on the nexus between the home movie, archives and material culture. This interdisciplinary approach considers perspectives from Film Studies, Folklore and Ethnography, Archives and Digital Humanities in an effort to preserve and understand early moving images of the West, as well as theorising the home movie and contributing to a better understanding of the genre. To date, there has been no extended study of the relationship between the Irish West and amateur film, yet, the Irish Film Archive and other smaller, regional archives hold hundreds of home movies and travelogues filmed there. From an ethnographic standpoint, the home movie offers unparalleled access to how we choose to document our lives, therefore holding immense sociological value; however, the ways in which we mischaracterise home movies, and the fact that they tend to sit uncomfortably in most archives, often means this valuable material remains hidden in plain sight. To neglect the home movie is to neglect the way the average person documents their world. As our ability to record our lives rapidly increases, frameworks that help us understand the home movie become increasingly necessary. This comprehensive study of early amateur footage in the heavily documented Irish West will offer new insight into the legacy of this documentation and the research value of the home movie itself. 01/09/2024 31/08/2026 112986.5
    ‘Refocusing Women: Expanding Techniques to Enhance Archive Metadata for Women Filmmakers' PI Our UK-Ireland Digital Humanities project, ‘Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing’, has provided concrete evidence of the underlying issues and processes that result in exclusion from, and continue to prevent more women filmmakers being visible within, film archive cataloguing practices. Working closely with two archive institutions, the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA) and the Irish Film Institute Archive (IFIA), our project team has identified a set of tools informed by feminist praxis and EDI principles that can be adopted and used by existing staff at film and media archives. The next step in deploying this toolkit is to embed it in archival practice across archive settings in the UK and Ireland and to gather evidence as to the advantages the sector can gain from broader application and use of tools intended to be more inclusive of the diversity of filmmakers in archive film collections. 01/11/2023 31/10/2024 39910.08

    Book

    Year Publication
    2021 O' Brien A, Arnold S & Kerrigan P. (2021) Media Graduates at Work: Irish Narratives on Policy, Education and Industry. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
    2021 Sarah Arnold (2021) Gender and Early Television. London: Bloomsbury.
    2013 Sarah Arnold; Mark de Valk (2013) The Film Handbook. London: Routledge.
    2013 Sarah Arnold (2013) Maternal Horror Film: Motherhood and Melodrama. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Peer Reviewed Journal

    Year Publication
    2025 O' Brien, A & Arnold, S (2025) 'Employment motivations and values in the creative industries: Reorienting from creativity to well-being among-Generation Zs in Ireland'. European Journal of Cultural Studies, . [DOI]
    2025 Sarah Arnold; Izzy Fox (2025) 'Challenges and opportunities in teaching gender equality in Irish secondary schools'. Gender and Education, Online First :1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2025.2462051
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden (2024) 'Hidden in Plain Sight: Attending to Women’s Amateur Filmmaking Histories at the Irish Film Archive'. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, . [Link] [DOI]
    2024 Arnold, S.; O’Brien, A.; Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė, L.; Šalaj, J. (2024) '“I never thought about how much of a juggle it would be”: motherhood and work in contemporary Lithuanian and Irish creative industries'. Feminist Media Studies, . [Link] [DOI]
    2024 O’Brien, A.; Arnold, S. (2024) 'Combining motherhood and work in the creative industries: Mothers have the problem'. Media, Culture and Society, . [Link] [DOI]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Kate Terkanian; Helen Warner (2024) 'Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television'. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 44 (4):656-668. [Link] [DOI]
    2023 Arnold, S.; O’Brien, A. (2023) '“I’m so lucky”: narratives of struggle, unfairness and luck in among new entrants to the Irish media industries'. Creative Industries Journal, . [Link] [DOI]
    2022 Arnold S. (2022) 'Skills narratives amongst media degree graduates and students: Discourses of hard and soft skills in education-to-work journeys'. Industry And Higher Education, . [DOI] [Full-Text]
    2022 O' Brien, A & Arnold, S. (2022) 'Creative industries’ new entrants as equality, diversity and inclusion change agents?'. Cultural Trends, . https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2022.2141100 [Full-Text]
    2022 Sarah Arnold & Hannah Andrews (2022) 'Editorial'. Critical Studies in Television: scholarly studies in small screen fictions, 17 (3). [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text]
    2022 O' Brien, A & Arnold, S. (2022) 'Imagining Diversity: An Irish Case Study of Graduates’ Perceptions of Inequality in Media Work'. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, (24):32-48. [Link] [Full-Text]
    2021 Arnold S. (2021) 'Experiments in early US television: windows of opportunities for female technical workers in the 1940s'. Women's History Review, . [DOI] [Full-Text]
    2021 O’ Brien, Anne & Arnold, Sarah (2021) 'Doing Women’s Film and Television History: Locating Women in Film and Television, Past and Present'. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, . https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.20.01 [Full-Text]
    2018 Sarah Arnold (2018) 'The Production of Television’s Female Audience: Early BBC Audience Research and Gender Classification'. . [Full-Text]
    2015 Sarah Arnold (2015) 'Urban Decay Photography and Film: Fetishism and the Apocalyptic Imagination'. Journal of Urban History, 41 (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144214563499 [Full-Text]
    2014 Sarah Arnold; Dario Llinares (2014) 'New Perspectives on Cinematic Spectatorship, Digital Culture and Space: Re-evaluating Exhibition, Participation and Interaction'. .
    2013 Sarah Arnold (2013) 'Redacted: The Iraqi War According to Youtube'. . [Full-Text]

    Book Chapter

    Year Publication
    2017 Arnold, S (2017) 'Larry Clark's Sex Education: Adolescent Sexuality and the Denial of Denial' In: TAINTED LOVE: SCREENING SEXUAL PERVERSION. LONDON : I B TAURIS & CO LTD.
    2015 Sarah Arnold (2015) 'Netflix and the Myth of Choice/Participation/Autonomy' In: The Netflix Effect Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. New York : Bloomsbury.
    2011 Sarah Arnold (2011) 'The Ring and Ringu: Naturalising Maternal Self-Sacrifice' In: Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television since 1950. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear : Cambridge Scholars Press.

    Published Report

    Year Publication
    2024 Marica Spalletta; Kim Toft Hansen; Louise Brix Jacobsen; Camilla Møller Olesen; Paola De Rosa; Raluca Radu; Nicola Ferrigni; Mihai Coman; Anamaria Sasu; Nicoleta Talpes; Sarah Arnold; Izzy Fox (2024) Understanding Young Adults. European Commission, . [Link]
    2020 O’ Brien, A., Arnold, S. Culloty, E. Naji, J. (2020) Global Alliance on Media and Gender Country Report on Ireland. GAMAG, .

    Conference Contribution

    Year Publication
    2025 Anne O'Brien; Sarah Arnold (2025) Inequalities in the Creative Industries Creative Industries and working mothers in Ireland- Motherhood as the problem for Mothers to fix Birmingham City University, 16/01/2025-16/01/2025.
    2025 Sarah Arnold; Anne O'Brien (2025) Inequalities in the Creative Industries Employment Motivations and Values in the CIs: Reorienting from Creativity to Wellbeing, Generation Zs in Ireland Birmingham City University, 16/01/2024-16/01/2024.
    2024 Sarah Arnold (2024) International Federation for Research in Women's History conference Archival Interventions: women’s amateur filmmaking and correctives to its absence in audiovisual archive Tsuda University -Sendagaya Campus- 1-18-24 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0051, 09/08/2024-09/08/2024. [Link]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Moynagh Sullivan (2024) IASIL Conference Patriarchal Aftermaths: The Rise of Motherhood Studies in 21st Century Irish Studies Gakushuin University Tokyo, 05/08/2024-07/08/2024. [Link]
    2024 Sarah Arnold (2024) Animation and Ireland Symposium The Animated Films of Flora Kerrigan IADT, Dublin, 29/11/2024-29/11/2024.
    2024 Sarah Arnold (2024) Aesthetics of Access (DAVIF) Amateur Film, Women’s Cultural Production and Feminist Approaches to Metadata Deutscher Sprachatlas, Pilgrimstein 16, 35037 Marburg, 14/11/2024-14/11/2024. [Link]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Kasandra O'Connell (2024) Hidden Archives: Marginalised and Alternative Collections and Practices omen in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing Dublin, 30/01/2024-30/01/2024. [Link]
    2023 Sarah Arnold; Anne O'Brien (2023) Meno avilys The Horrors of Motherhood in Irish Film: a study of representation and industry participation Meno Avilys' Cinematheque (A. Goštauto St. 2, Vilnius), 01/02/2023-01/02/2023. [Link]
    2023 Sarah Arnold; Anne O'Brien (2023) Gender, Work & Organization Imagining diversity - An Irish case study of graduates perceptions of inequality in media work Stellenbosch, South Africa, 28/06/2023-30/06/2023. [Link]
    2022 Sarah Arnold (2022) BBC at 100 Television Studies: Women at the BBC Bradford University, 13/09/2022-15/09/2022.
    2022 Sarah Arnold (2022) Motherhood on Screen Domesticating Motherhood in Contemporary Irish Horror Film Maynooth University, 23/09/2022-24/09/2022.
    2021 Sarah Arnold (2021) Television Histories in Development Creating the daytime audience data: (Mis)locating women in US television audience research Hilverstrum, Netherlands, 30/09/2021-01/10/2021.
    2021 Sarah Arnold & Anne O'Brien (2021) Motherhood and Work Motherhood and Work: A virtual conference Virtual, 24/06/2021-25/06/2021.
    2021 Sarah Arnold (2021) 'International Best Practice' The future of media: experience, models, practice Royal Irish Academy, 06/05/2021-.
    2021 Anne O Brien & Sarah Arnold (2021) Gender Work and Organisation Equality and Diversity in the Media Industries: attitudes among new entrants to media work in Ireland Online, .
    2020 Sarah Arnold & Anne O'Brien (2020) “I was very much aware of what I would have to sacrifice…”: Finding media graduates’ lived experience, memories of education and career narratives through qualitative methodologies Methodologies for Screen Media Research Bristol, Watershed Cinema & UWE, 15/01/2020-15/01/2020.
    2019 Sarah Arnold (2019) Women in Media Conference on female practitioners in the Irish media sectors University College Cork, 15/03/2019-.
    2019 Sarah Arnold (2019) Experiments in early US television: Windows of opportunities for female technical workers in the 1940s Invited speaker at Gendered labour, technology and the media workshop Sussex University, Brighton, .
    2018 Sarah Arnold (2018) Audience Research at the BBC: Gendering and Scheduling Presentation at conference Doing Women's Film & Television History Southampton, UK, .
    2018 Sarah Arnold (2018) ‘Internalised misogynists’: The language of oppression and female Trump supporters This paper considers how the use of gendered discourse in criticisms of female Trump supporters risks reinforcing existing gender structures, reproduces discursive regimes that humiliate and silence and denies those very women subjectivity and agency SCMS, Toronto, Canada, .
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) Feminist Futures: intersections of new media, technologies and women’s bodies, sex and sexuality Lecture delivered at Dublin Feminist Film Festival Dublin, .
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) ‘Internalised misogynists’: The language of oppression and female Trump supporters This paper considers how the use of gendered discourse in criticisms of female Trump supporters risks reinforcing existing gender structures, reproduces discursive regimes that humiliate and silence and denies those very women subjectivity and agency Trump's America conference UCD, Dublin, Ireland, .
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) Making the Female Audience: Audience Research at the BBC This paper traces the means by which the institutionally-produced category of the female viewer formed in early television audience research at the BBC International Federation of Television Archives, Mexico City, .
    2016 Sarah Arnold, Anne O'Brien and Maria Pramaggiore (2016) Othered Voices: Women’s Voices in Media Industries Panel discussion on women in the Irish media industries Dublin Feminist Film Festival, .

    Blog

    Year Publication
    2021 Sarah Arnold (2021) What Future For Irish Public Service Television?: Rté Television And Technological Adaptation. [Blog] [Link]
    2020 Sarah Arnold (2020) Reflections on Media Education During the Covid-19 Lockdowns. [Blog] [Link]
    2019 Sarah Arnold & Anne O'Brien (2019) From Education to Work: Media Graduates’ Experience of the Media Industries. [Blog] [Link]
    2018 Sarah Arnold (2018) The BBC Gender Problem: A Century in the Making. [Blog]
    2018 Sarah Arnold (2018) Between Programme Policy and Practice: Gender, Diversity and the Case of RTÉ’s Children’s Christmas Show, the Late Late Toy Show. [Blog]
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) When news and drama compete for time: The Handmaid’s Tale’s release. [Blog] [Link]
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) Virtual Reality: The Sexual Revolution is not Taking Place. [Blog] [Link]
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) Live from Facebook… and the BBC… and the Users: Video Streaming and Authorship. [Blog] [Link]
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) What Use is a Gendered Audience?: Institutional Classification Then and Now. [Blog] [Link]
    2016 Sarah Arnold (2016) Live Broadcasting: Brought to you by Facebook. [Blog] [Link]
    2016 Sarah Arnold (2016) Isn't it Funny: Now we can Laugh at Brexit. [Blog] [Link]

    Book Review

    Year Publication
    2022 Sarah Arnold (2022) Book Review: Frances Galt, Women’s Activism Behind the Screens: Trade Unions and Gender Inequality in the British Film and Television Industries, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021. [Book Review]
    2022 Arnold, S (2022) Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema. EDINBURGH: [Book Review] [DOI]

    Invited Lectures

    Year Publication
    2017 Sarah Arnold (2017) Feminist Futures: intersections of new media, technologies and women’s bodies, sex and sexuality. Dublin Feminist Film Festival 2017: [Invited Lectures] [Link]

    Newspaper Articles

    Year Publication
    2019 Sarah Arnold (2019) Derry Girls and the value of good television. [Newspaper Articles] [Link]
    2019 Sarah Arnold (2019) And the winner is: the Academy Awards' problem with women. [Newspaper Articles] [Link]
    2020 Sarah Arnold (2020) How Netflix changed what we watch on our screens. [Newspaper Articles] [Link]
    2017 Sarah Arnold & Anne O'Brien (2017) Newstalk and RTE aren't alone - most of the Irish media industry has a 'woman problem'. [Newspaper Articles] [Link]

    Article

    Year Publication
    2024 Sarah Arnold (2024) Fighting for Better Representation of Women in and on RTÉ: Women’s Work in Promoting Gender Equality at Ireland’s National Broadcaster, 1979-1981. [Article] [Link] [DOI]

    Report

    Year Publication
    2023 Sarah Arnold; Paul Frith; Keith M Johnston; Carolann Madden; Zoë Viney Burgess (2023) Women in Focus: A Toolkit for Archiving Women. UEA: [Report] [Link]

    Screening

    Year Publication
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Sunniva O'Flynn; Kasandra O'Connell; Flora Kerrigan (2024) CINÉ-CONCERT: A FOCUS ON FLORA KERRIGAN. [Screening] [Link]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Kasandra O'Connell; Flora Kerrigan (2024) A Focus on Flora Kerrigan. London: [Screening] [Link]
    2023 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Sunniva O'Flynn; Kasandra O'Connell; Flora Kerrigan (2023) IFI Cork On Camera: A Focus on Flora Kerrigan. Cork: [Screening] [Link]
    2023 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Kasandra O'Connell (2023) Irish Women’s Amateur Filmmakers. Berlin: [Screening] [Link]
    2022 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Kasandra O'Connell; Sr Maureen MacMahon (2022) IFI & MAYNOOTH: WOMEN IN FOCUS. Dublin: [Screening] [Link]

    Workshops

    Year Publication
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Ciarán Walsh (2024) Any old film in the attic? Managing personal collections of film and digital media. [Workshops] [Link]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Kasandra O'Connell (2024) Empowering Archives training at the Irish Film Archive. Dublin: [Workshops]
    2024 Sarah Arnold; Carolann Madden; Ciarán Walsh; John Lynch; Michael Mulcahy (2024) Making Movies: a workshop in 8mm and 16mm filmmaking. [Workshops] [Link]
    2024 Kasandra O'Connell; Sarah Arnold (2024) IFI & Dublin Festival of History –Women & Amateur Film in Focus. Dublin: [Workshops] [Link]
    Certain data included herein are derived from the © Web of Science (2025) of Clarivate. All rights reserved.

    Professional Associations

    Description Function From / To
    Royal Television Society Member 03/07/2017 -
    Women in Film & Television Ireland Member 03/10/2017 -

    Honors and Awards

    Date Title Awarding Body
    01/10/2017 Media Studies Grant International Federation of Television Archives
    01/09/2006 PhD Scholarship Huston School of Film and Digital Media

    Committees

    Committee Function From / To
    Academic Discipline Board Member 04/09/2017 -
    Learning and Teaching Committee Member 30/11/2016 -

    Employment

    Employer Position From / To
    Axonista Project Manager 25/01/2016 - 15/07/2016
    Southampton Solent University Lecturer in Film & TV 21/09/2009 - 31/08/2011
    Falmouth University Lecturer in Film & TV 01/09/2011 - 25/01/2016

    Education

    Start date Institution Qualification Subject
    Southampton Solent Certificate in Blended Learning Blended Learning

    Teaching Interests

    I lecture on undergraduate and postgraduate courses on subjects related to the study of television, screen media and media technologies as well as screen production and research methods for media practice. 
    Taught modules are as follows:
    BA Media Studies:
    • MD161 Introduction to Media & Cultural Studies
    • MD332 Media & Cultural Work
    • MD314 Media & Cultural Industries
    I am Head of Department since September 2023.

    I also supervise PhD projects on subjects in film and television industries and work; and gender and representation gender and work. Past PhD students include John Hillman and Tugce Bivac. Current PhD students include Eleanor McSherry, Jonathan O'Brien and Sarah Larkin. Postdoctoral researchers that I supervise include Carolann Madden and Izzy Fox.