Dr Joanna Callaghan is an artist filmmaker and Professor of Filmmaking.

Joanna creates distinctive films which explore philosophical & ethical issues from a female point of view. She often mixes fiction, documentary, photography & performance, presenting characters & stories that reflect the diversity & complexity of women’s experiences. Her most recent work 'Goodbye Breasts!' (2025) is a documentary and art installation about breast cancer and faulty genes and an autobiographical essay film ‘Record’ about identity & migration. Her 2014 hybrid feature 'Love in the Post: From Plato to Derrida’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, awarded first prize from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, is distributed by Kanopy and is in over 100 collections. Her films have been shown in cinemas and galleries including the Australia Centre for the Moving Image, HOME Manchester, Watershed Bristol, Whitechapel Gallery and Somerset House and in festivals such as Brighton Cine-City Festival & Exis Experimental Film Festival Seoul.

From 2011 -2020 she was the Chair of the Practice network for the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association. In that role, she has championed the teaching and research of film practice within the subject area, organising symposia and participating in consultations with HEFCE, UK Research Councils, the British Film Institute and Creative England. She is a member of the steering committee of the Practice Research Advisory Group and was the Principal Investigator on an AHRC network project on filmmaking research.

Callaghan was a REF2021 panel member for Panel 34 Communications, Media and Cultural Studies.

As a curator Callaghan has produced touring exhibitions of artists films including Artist vs Hollywood (2005-9) at Globe Gallery Newcastle, The Block, Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, NBK Berlin & Curzon Soho. She ran artist run space Elastic Residence in Whitechapel from 2003-2006 curating exhibitions including a large scale international activist project KISSS exhibited at Castlefield Gallery Manchester & Concial Gallery Melbourne.