Staff Directory

Professor Florence Ayisi is professor of International Documentary Film at the Faculty of Creative Industries, University of South Wales (USW). She teaches and researches in diverse areas of documentary film history, theory, and practice, digital ethnography, media representations, spectatorship and transnational cinemas. She has taught film and media studies for over 25 years at several HE  Institutions (University of Sunderland, Coventry University, University of Glamorgan, and the University of Wales, Newport)

Ayisi is also a multi award-winning documentary filmmaker with extensive experience of filmmaking in the academy. She has produced several documentary films which have been widely screened nationally and internationally at film festivals and on Television. She has worked extensively with third sector organisations, community-based groups, and government bodies within the broad framework of Communication for Development in Cameroon, Zanzibar, Germany and Wales.
Research Interests and Expertise
Ayisi’s research aims to expand the revisionist dialogues around the decolonisation of African culture from Pan-African and Woman-centred perspectives, and within a transnational and postcolonial framework. The broader agenda of her ethnographic filmmaking in the academy is aimed at using documentary as a decolonising practice to shift the paradigm by producing affirmative subjectivities, narratives, visibilities and representations that undo the notion of ‘other’ with regards to Africa. She has collaborated with diverse marginalised communities and groups, including women’s groups, to produce documentaries with resultant impact on social attitudes and government policy. She developed an Impact Case Study which was part of USW’s 2014 REF submission. Her most recent documentary film, 'The Bronze Men of Cameroon' (2020) has been programmed at several international film festivals. She has also written extensively about representational issues and questions of (in)visibility relating to African Women in book chapters and journal articles. These include ‘The Politics of Representation and Audience Reception: Alternative Visions of Africa’ (Co-authored, 2013), ‘How We Live Today…’ Florence Ayisi in dialogue with Mo White’, in Women, the Arts and Globalization: Eccentric Experience (2013), ‘Making Waves on International Women’s Day: Cameroonian Women’s Dynamism’, in Home/Land: Women Citizenship, Photographies (2016) and See Me, Know Me - Cultural Expressions of Cameroonian Women
(2014)


Employment History/Experience

University of South Wales
•    2014 - present: Professor of International Documentary Film
•    2013 - 2014: Reader in Film Practice

University of Wales, Newport
•    2008 – 2013: Reader in Film Practice
•    2005 - 2008: Senior Lecturer in Film & Video
•    2003 – 2005: Programme Leader BA (Hons) Film & Video
•    2000 – 2003: Senior Lecturer in Film & Video

University of Glamorgan, Wales
•    1998 - 2000: Senior Lecturer in Media/Film Studies



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