Victoria McCollum, PhD

Victoria McCollum is from Coleraine (Northern Ireland) and holds a PhD in Cultural & Film Studies; a BA (Hons) in Media Arts; and a PG Cert in Higher Education Practice from Ulster University. She has an MA in Film Practice from Queen’s University (Belfast) and a PG Cert in Global Business Leadership and Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Victoria previously held positions at the BBC and ITV (Northern Ireland), the Irish Film Board (Ireland) and HBO (United States). Before joining Ulster in 2016, she held a position at HBO (Time Warner Inc.), at their headquarters in New York, developing, marketing and promoting HBO's licensed products both within the U.S. and internationally. At HBO, Victoria collaborated on projects with Apple, Cartoon Network, Cinemax, Facebook, New Line Cinema, Sesame Street, Sky Atlantic, Telltale Games, Time Warner, Twitter and Universal Music Group.

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Victoria is a Senior Lecturer (in Cinematic Arts) and the Director of Development and External Partnerships in the School of Arts and Humanities at Ulster University. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and serves on various boards of representatives from the arts and cultural sector. In 2023, she was elected to Ulster University's Senate.

 

In 2016, Victoria was awarded the Creativity and Culture prize by Ulster University's Department of Research and Impact for demonstrating exceptional skill in communicating the purpose, meaning and impact of her research. The following year, she was awarded the Civic Impact prize for curating and delivering Derry ~ Londonderry's 1st Mental Health Film Festival in association with Nerve Centre and Oscar-affiliated Foyle Film Festival. In 2018, Victoria was awarded the Early Career Research Excellence Award at Ulster University, and in 2020, she won the Early Career Educator Excellence Award. In 2021, Victoria was awarded a Civic Ambassador Pin for her contribution to educational and community outreach, especially through her collaboration with Manchester United Football Club. In 2022, Victoria won the Excellence Award in Support of Student Ambition and in 2023, she was nominated for PhD Supervisor of the Year. In 2024, Victoria won the Broadcast Education Association (USA) 'Best in Festival' prize for her screen practice. Victoria currently supervises nine doctoral candidates within the School of Arts and Humanities. Recently, she was a Visiting Lecturer at Kadir Has University (Istanbul), College of Charleston (South Carolina) and various institutions across India.

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Victoria has published a number of cutting-edge books, including, Post-9/11 Heartland Horror: Rural Horror Films in an Era of Urban Terrorism (2016); HBO’s Original Voices: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Power (2018); Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism and Resistance (2018); Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear (2019); Resist! Protest Media and Popular Culture in the Brexit-Trump Era (2020); Bloody Women! Women Directors of Horror (2022); and Blumhouse: The New House of Horror (2022). She is Co-Investigator on a Higher Education Research Capital (HERC) project that will deliver £536k investment on a new Virtual Production Facility at Ulster. She is also working as a director, producer and researcher on a supernatural heritage project, The Witches of Islandmagee.