Research Interests:

• Japanese cinema—female directors, film stars, and audiences.
• Videographic criticism.

Dr. Colleen Laird is an Assistant Professor of Japanese Cinema in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) where she teaches courses on Japanese film and videographic criticism. She is also an affiliated teaching faculty with the University of Amherst, Massachusetts graduate certificate program in videographic criticism. She has published videographic works in 16:9, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture, Open Screens, Screenworks, Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, and Tekonokultura. She also has print articles with the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Feminist Media Studies, Frames Cinema Journal, and Jump Cut. Her video essays have been included in the Sight and Sound Best Video Essays annually since in 2022.

Dr. Laird was the PI for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection (SSHRC) Grant for the “Embodying the Video Essay” (2023) and “Reframing the Argument” videographic workshops (2025). She is Co-PI on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded Ways of Undoing project (2026-2028) as well as co-organizer of the Videographic Venice summer programs at Venice International University. Her piece “See Under: Orient” won Honorable Mention at the 2025 Adelio Ferrero Award festival.

Dr. Laird is the lead researcher of the SSHRC-funded “Japanese Women Directors Project” and has produced three series of public-facing educational videos on Japanese cinema as well as interviews with international scholars of Japanese film (hosted on her YouTube channel). Most of her videos, however, live on her Vimeo account. She is currently working on a year-long project on supercuts.

Her forthcoming monograph, Sea Change: Japan’s New Wave of Female Filmmakers is under press with Rutgers University Press.

Produced Video Series:

Japanese Women Directors Project: Digital Dialogue Series

2022 Formal Analysis and Japanese Cinema Series

2021 J-Horror Video Series

Peer-Reviewed Articles, Book Chapters, Essays, and Videographic Criticism

彼岸花 / Equinox Flower (Warr’s Constraint). [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies. Vol. 11, No. 3. September, 2024.

家. Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays. Issue 13. July 25, 2024.

Female Benshi, Past and Present. The World of the Benshi. Edited by Daisuke Miyao and Micheal Emmerich. Yanai Initiative. 2024. pp. 113-128

Kūki. MAI: Feminism & Visual Culture. No. 13, February 6, 2023.

Eye-Camera-Ninagawa. In[Transition]: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 10.2, 2023.

I am Yakusho Kōji. Tecmerin: Journal of Audiovisual Essays, No. 11, 2023.

Crossing Thresholds: Contemporary Female Directors at Home in Japanese Cinema. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 15:1, pp. 37-54, 2023.

One Ghost, Two Shells: The Transnational Treasure Text of Kikuchi Rinko. Feminist Media Studies. Taylor and Francis. February, 2020.

Imaging a Female Filmmaker: The Director Personas of Nishikawa Miwa and Ogigami Naoko. Frames Cinema Journal. Special Issue: “Promotional Materials.” May 2013.  

Star gazing: Sight lines and studio brands in post-war Japanese film posters. The Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 3: 2, pp. 95–115, 2012.

• Reprinted by request in Japanese Cinema. Edited by Julian Stringer and Nikki J. Y. Lee. London: Routledge. 2014.

Japanese Cinema, the Classroom, and Swallowtail Butterfly. Jump Cut. No. 52, summer 2010.

Tanada Yuki. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 3^rd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2015. Essay.

Kawase Naomi’s Mogari no Mori. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2^nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.

Nishikawa Miwa’s Dear Doctor. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2^nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.

Nishikawa Miwa’s Yureru. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2^nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.

Ogigami Naoko. The World Directory of Cinema: Japan, 2^nd Edition. Edited by John Berra. Intellect Ltd. 2012. Essay.

Other Contributions to Film and Media Studies

A Year of SuperCuts. An ongoing project in 2026 to explore the formal potential of the videographic supercut.

See Under: Orient. Video essay created for the “100 Movies Walk Into a Bar…” project co-organized with Ariel Avissar. Summer, 2025. Published in the journal 16:9, and screened at the Festival Cinema Adelio Ferrero in Alessandria, Italy (September, 2025) where it won Honorable Mention.

The High Cost of Simple Pleasure. Video essay created for the Ways of Doing “The Conceptual Epigraph” exercise “Feminist Citational Practices” series. May, 2025.

The Most Uncertain Hour (Laird’s Constraint). Video essay created for Ariel Avissar’s Parametric Summer Series Workshop. August, 2024.

What Makes Us Samurai (Payne’s Constraint). Video essay created for Ariel Avissar’s Parametric Summer Series Workshop. July, 2024.

In Between (Grant’s Constraint). Video essay created for Ariel Avissar’s Parametric Summer Series Workshop. June, 2024.

Cozy Gaming. Video essay created for the Ways of Doing “Making Materiality Matter” exercise as part of the initiative’s “Feminist Citational Practices” series. June, 2024.

What’s Going On? Video essay created for the Ways of Doing “Dis/Re/Orienting Cinematic Language” exercise as part of the initiative’s “Feminist Citational Practices” series. May, 2024.

Dreams/夢中人. Video essay collaboration for Dr. Ian Garwood’s “Indy Vinyl” project. Published online June 8th, 2023.

Video Games and the Media mix. In Media Res. Theme Week Coordinator for UBC graduate students Iman Isa, Catherine Tran, Yuewei Wang, Anika Kudzyk, and Bianca Chui. March 21-25, 2022.

Japanese Paratexts. In Media Res. Theme Week Coordinator for UBC graduate students Ai Yamamoto, Oğuzhan Kaya, Rosaley Gai, Lilian Higashikata, Jaylene Laturnas, and Alisa Guo. August 17-21, 2020.

Feminism in the Works: Japanese Women Directors and Behind-the-Scenes Collaboration. In Media Res. November 13, 2019. 

Sight and Sound as Compromised Witness: Kore’eda’s “The Third Murder.” In Media Res. August 29, 2019.—Featured as a “Staff Pick” highlight and reposted on November 24, 2019.

Arts and Humanities Research Council Catalyst Grant: Ways of Undoing. 2026-2028.

SSHRC Connection Grant: Reframing the Argument: Videographic Criticism as Graduate Research Practice. 2025.

Videographic works included in the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound poll of “Best Video Essays” in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Ishibashi Foundation/The Japan Foundation Fellowship Program for Japanese Art. Japan Foundation, Los Angeles. June, 2023.

SSHRC Connection Grant: Embodying the Video Essay: Methods in Videographic Theory Through Global Communities of Practice. 2023.

British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund: Collaborative Digital Heritage Studio (CoDHerS). University of British Columbia. 2022-2024.

OER Implementation Fund. University of British Columbia. 2022

SSHRC Connection Grant: Japanese Women Directors Project. 2022

Arts & Culture and Japanese Studies and Intellectual Exchange Grant. Japan Foundation. 2022

Hampton Fund Research Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences: New Faculty Grant. University of British Columbia. 2020-2022.

Japan Foundation Japanese Teaching Materials Purchase Grant. 2018; 2019.

2013-2014 Teaching Excellence Award. University of North Carolina at Greensboro, College of Arts and Sciences. Greensboro, North Carolina.

Recent Event Participation

“Women Directors in Contemporary Japanese Cinema.” Online recorded talk for The Japan Foundation, Toronto. June 9, 2022.

Discussion/Event Moderator: Massy Reads book launch for Chris Rea, Ervin Malakaj, and Kyle Frackman. March, 2022.

On Miike Takashi’s Audition. Invited film introduction and Q&A panelist for the GlobalEYES film festival. Online. Vancouver, BC. March 25, 2021.

What is this Place? On Finding a Research Path through Troubled Times and Spaces. Keynote speech. Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. March 13, 2021.

The Ghost of Kurosawa. Online public talk for the Vancouver Public Library as part of the Contemporary Asian Stories lecture series. December 10, 2020.

AAS Digital Dialogue on Gender Equity and Fair Practices. Panelist. Hosted online by the Association for Asian Studies. October 14, 2020.

Utsukushiki Ikari: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Cinema of Extremes. Online presentation for the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia as part of the Visual and Material Culture Seminar.  Vancouver, Canada. September 17, 2020.

Recent Conference Presentations

Videographic Criticism Beyond Mainstream Visual Cultures: Encounters with the Unfamiliar. Roundtable participant at the LASA/Oceania-Asia 2025 international conference. November 19, 2025. La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.

Citation as Return: Scholarship Through Adaptation and Remake (the Laird’s Constraint). Panel Chair and Discussant at Screen Studies Conference. Glasgow, Scotland. July 27-29, 2025.

The video essay in pain: Confronting ethics in videographic criticism. Roundtable participant for the Society and Cinema Media Studies annual international conference. April 3, 2025. Chicago, Illinois, US.

Japanese Cinema and Videographic Scholarship. Hybrid video essay presentation on the panel “Mixed Media and the Extra-Cinematic” at the Kinema Club Conference: Borders, Boundaries, Edges, and Fringes in Japanese Film (Studies). University of Sheffield, UK. June 13, 2024.

The Boundaries of Space and Place in Japanese Cinema. Roundtable participant at the Kinema Club Conference: Borders, Boundaries, Edges, and Fringes in Japanese Film (Studies). University of Sheffield, UK. June 13, 2024.

I am Yakusho Kōji. Videographic essay presentation as part of the “Videographic Star Studies: Screen Stars Dictionary” roundtable at the Society For Cinema And Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference. March 16, 2024. Boston, MA, USA.

Exploring a Personal Relationship with Japanese Cinema. Videographic performance presentation at the In the Works: Makings and Unmakings of the Video Essay conference. November 4, 2023. Lucerne, Switzerland.

What is Home but Four Walls, a Floor, and a Ceiling? The Suitcase in the Works of Contemporary Japanese Women Directors. Videographic essay presented at the European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS) annual conference. Ghent, Belgium, August 17-20, 2023.

Kūki. Video essay presentation as part of a roundtable at the Doing Women’s Film and Television History conference. University of Sussex, UK. June 14-16, 2023.

Reflecting Ashizawa Akiko. Roundtable presentation for the “New Voices in Cinephilia” series at the University of Leeds, UK. May 3, 2023.

The Accented Video Essay: Ashizawa Akiko. Videographic essay presented as part of a roundtable for the Society For Cinema And Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference. Denver, CO, USA. April 12-15, 2023.

Kūki. Videographic essay presented at the Workshop on Videographic Criticism hosted at Western Washington University. April 6, 2023.

Women’s Film History Roundtable. Participant. De-Westernising Horror Conference. October 31-November 1, 2022. Kings College London, UK.

Eye-Camera-Ninagawa. Videographic essay presented at the “Theory and Practice of the Video Essay: A Conference” International Conference on Videographic Criticism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sept. 22-23, 2022.

Nishikawa Miwa’s Way with Words: Gender, the Japanese Film Industry, and the Art of Adaptation. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference. Chicago (online). April 2, 2022. 

Japanese Past as Chinese Present: Mukokuseki in Genshin Impact. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies annual International Conference. Honolulu, Hawai’i. March 26, 2022.

What is This Place: HBO’s Westworld and Orientalism of the Future. Paper presented at the 16th International Conference of the European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS) Conference. Ghent, Belgium. August 25-28, 2021.

Shifting the Syllabus: Reframing the Masculine Narrative in Japanese Cinema Classrooms. Paper accepted presented at the Teaching Women’s Filmmaking Conference. International Conference. Online. April 16-17, 2021.

Butterflies and Blood Spatters: The Ostentatious Scopophilia of Ninagawa Mika’s Feminine Fantasies. Paper presented at  Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual International Conference.  Online. March 25, 2021.

Extravagance and Extremes: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Female Narratives. Paper accepted for presentation at Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference. Online. March 19, 2021. 

Japanese Cinema: De-centering Film Studies and Visual Literacy Pedagogy. Paper presented at the Japan in the World, The World in Japan International Symposium. Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. September 16-17, 2019.

Gender Troubles and Gendered Directors in Contemporary Japanese Cinema. Presented by invitation at the Feminist World-Building in Japanese Cinema / Building Feminist Worlds in Japanese Cinema Symposium. University of California at San Diego, USA. May 2-3, 2019.        

Made In Japan: Netflix Original Content and Mobile Transnationalism. Paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) National Conference, on the panel “Streaming Japan.” Seattle, Washington, USA. March 17, 2019.

Eastern bodies in a Western world: Post-Human Selves and Japanese Others in HBO’s Westworld. Presented at the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Japan Studies Association Conference. Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA. January 5, 2019.

A Career in Transition: The Queer Trajectory of Ogigami’s Naoko’s On-Screen Reflections. Paper presented at the Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ) Annual Conference. International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan. July 1, 2018.

Ogigami Naoko’s Cinematic Transitions: A Queer Journey from Homosociality to Transsexuality. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual International Conference, on the panel “Constructing Gender and Sexuality in Japan.” Washington DC, USA. March 24, 2018.

Screened and Not Heard: the Transnational Treasure Text of Kikuchi Rinko. Paper presented at the regional conference of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC). Willamette University in Salem, OR, USA.  June 11th, 2017.

Recent Invited Lectures

Lost in Translation? When Videographic Methodologies meet East Asian Media. Invited research presentation/seminar at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. October, 23 2025.

New Horizons: Print Scholarship, Videographic Criticism, and Japanese Women Directors. Research talk for the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, Japan. June 29, 2023.

Ninagawa Mika’s Scopophilic Authorship. Video essay featured for presentation at the University of Leeds, UK. May 10, 2023. International.

Collaborative Amplification: The Japanese Woman Directors Project. Invited talk for “Promoting Women in the Arts in the Digital Era: Mini-symposium and Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon” at the University of South Carolina. March 24, 2023. International.

Japanese Cinema and the Video Essay. Invited talk for the Japan Studies Lecture Series organized by the Dept. of Asian Studies at The University of British Columbia. October 30, 2019. Local.

Japanese Women Directors and Contemporary Cinema. Lecture and Q&A recorded 5/20/2022. Made available to the public online 06/2022. Japan Foundation, Toronto.

Coding Culture: Japanese Video Games and Japan in Video Games. Michigan State University. December 2, 2021.

What is this Place? On Finding a Research Path through Troubled Times and Spaces. Keynote talk. Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. March 13, 2021.

The Ghost of Kurosawa. Online Public Talk for the Vancouver Public Library as part of the Contemporary Asian Stories lecture series. December 10, 2020.

Iwai Shunji’s Swallowtail Butterfly. Invited online discussion for the University of California San Diego in Prof. Daisuke Miyao’s course “LTEA 138 Japanese Films: Introduction.” San Diego, California. October 7, 2020.

Utsukushiki Ikari: Seeing Red in Ninagawa Mika’s Cinema of Extremes. Invited online talk for the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia as part of Visual and Material Culture Seminar.  Vancouver, Canada. September 17, 2020.      

Mind the Gap: Japanese Women Directors and Commercial Cinema. Invited talk for the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. November 18, 2019.

Crossing the Threshold: Home-Leaving and Home-Making in the Works of Japanese Female Directors. Invited talk for the IAR Centre of Japanese Research at The University of British Columbia. October 30, 2019.

Japanese Cinema: De-centering Film Studies and Visual Literacy Pedagogy. Invited e-poster presentation for the Institute for the Scholarship of Teach and Learning (ISoTL) event “Celebrate SoTL” at The University of British Columbia. October 24, 2019.

Fellowships

Affiliate Visiting Scholar. Meiji University. 2023.

Affiliate Visiting Scholar. University of Leeds. 2023

Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History Fellowship. University of Leeds, UK. 2022-2023.

Scholarship in Sound and Image Fellow. Middlebury College, Vermont, U.S.A. June 2022.

Public Humanities Faculty Fellowship. University of British Columbia. 2021

Japan Foundation Short Term Teacher Training Fellowship. Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute, Urawa, Saitama, Japan. Summer, 2017

Long-Term Research, Study, and Employment Experiences in Japan

06/2023—Research stay and affiliation with Meiji University, Tokyo

06/2017-08/2017—Japan Foundation Japanese Teacher Training Fellowship: Saitama

07/2015-08/2015—Research trip funded by the Bates College Faculty Development Fund: Tokyo, Kyoto, & Shimonoseki

2010-2011 (Japanese AY)—As a Monbukagakusho Research Scholar at Tsukuba University: Tokyo & Tsukuba

2007-2008 (AY)—As a Language Student at The Inter-University Center: Yokohama

2003-2004—As an ALT with the JET Program: Hiroshima Prefecture, Onomichi City

2001-2002—Study Abroad at Waseda University: Tokyo