Lizzie Thynne's interests encompass both text and practice-based research and include the following: documentary, life histories, biography, queer studies, photography, surrealism, media industries.

Her current projects continue her interest in life histories and oral testimony. She was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project: 'Jill Craigie: Film Pioneer' and recently completed a feature documentary, INDEPENDENT MISS CRAIGIE (2021), which explores the life of the film-maker dubbed 'Britain's first woman director'. Thynne's film explores Craigie's career, and her struggles to make her radical films, through a first person narration performed by Hayley Atwell. It is based on the director's personal papers at The Women's Library (LSE) and uses many other archives including BBC Written Archives, BFI Special Collections and the British Entertainment History Project.

Thynne was commissioned with composer Ed Hughes to make 'Brighton: Symphony of a City' for the 50th Brighton Festival in May 2016, a silent film screened with a live orchestra, at Brighton Dome. Inspired by the 'city symphony' films of the silent era it depicts everyday life in the town today with glimpses of the past through amateur footage from Screen Archive South East juxtaposed with an original score by Hughes. It was released on the dvd, Symphonic Visions by Metier in 2018.

Thynne's critical writing often springs out of her in depth research for her films; she has written extensively on Claude Cahun and on the challenges of narrating life stories. She has also written on women's employment in television and on several topics relating to queer representation in film and television.

Other feature documentaries include ON THE BORDER (2012), a daughter’s exploration of her Finnish mother's life prompted by the remnants left in her flat – letters, objects, photographs. Fragmented memories, dreams, and diary entries are juxtaposed with the director’s journey to significant places and people in her family’s history from during and after the Russo-Finnish war. Her mother, Lea, and her siblings left their home in the disputed border territory of Karelia and her Lea's father was killed in 1941, fighting alongside the Germans against the Soviets. In this hypnotic work of mourning and remembrance, past and present, layers of association, memory and imagining intertwine, as the film evokes the lingering impact of war and exile.

Her AHRC-funded documentary PLAYING A PART: THE STORY OF CLAUDE CAHUN (2005) explores the life and work of this long neglected artist, and her partner, Suzanne Malherbe (Marcel Moore). It experiments with the biographical genre by mimicking Cahun's own destabilization of the 'self-portrait' including through choreographed sequences by Lea Anderson. It is widely shown to accompany major exhibitions of the surrealist photographer's work including at the Jeu de Paume, Paris and La Virreina Centre de L'Imatge, Barcelona, 2011 - 12. Cahun was a major interest over at least a decade and Thynne's research has also resulted in a series of articles on the artist.

Thynne is interested in how to represent public and personal memories in ways which address the complexities of relationships between memory, fantasy, writing and image and is working on a book on documentary and memory.

She has also published on lesbian representation in film and television, practice-based research and on women's employment in television. She has been active in the debates around and approaches to practice as research, contributing papers to the AHRC project, Practice as Research in Performance, and many other conferences and seminars on the pursuit of media practice/AV PhDs in the academy.

She welcomes PhD applicants in any of the above areas, especially for PhD in Critical and Creative Practice. Current research students' topics include the essay film and heterotopia and reimagining the menopause.
Please see personal website for news of current projects:

http://lizziethynne.co.uk/