During her PhD, Elspeth had major success with her film ‘Let Us Be Seen: analysing and documenting grassroots feminism in Belfast, 2019-2021'. The film premiered in March 2022 as part of International Women's Day celebrations in Belfast and was then screened internationally including across the UK, in Italy, Germany, Iceland and Canada.  

Speaking about her experience at Queen’s, Elspeth said: “My journey with this PhD has been an exciting one. Navigating how to approach such a project was a steep learning curve, as was traversing lockdown measures and trying to get a small crew together to film between pandemic restrictions in 2020!   

“Overall, I am very grateful to have worked with so many amazing individuals who featured both in front the camera and helped make the practice element of this research possible. I have been so fortunate to have really supportive supervisors and been able to travel with my work. Discussing ideas raised in this research with folks in different parts of the world has been really unforgettable.”  

Elspeth has taken up a post as Project Coordinator at the Nerve Centre for a community archival project ‘Northern Ireland Now: Contemporary Collecting’ with Northern Ireland Screen. The project is adding to the Digital Film Archive which contains hundreds of hours of film spanning from 1897 to the present day and is mainly focused on Northern Ireland society, and pre-partition Ireland.  

Elspeth is pictured with her mum, Dolores, who recently retired from Queen’s in 2021 after 19 years and now runs Creative Tours Belfast and dad Jonathan, who also graduated with a PhD from the School of Arts, English and Languages from Queen’s in 2021.

Media

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