Stuart Romeo-Richards

Research Interests

Cultural and creative industries Feminist and queer theory Film and Television

Dr Stuart Romeo-Richards

Senior Lecturer

School of Communication, Media and Journalism

College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.

Available For Media Comment.

Stuart's research focuses on film festivals, adaptations and queer screen media. He is the author of The Queer Film Festival: Popcorn & Politics (2016), Agatha Christie and Gothic Horror: Adaptations and Televisuality (2024) and co-author of Australian Queer Screens: Diversity and Social Change in Film and TV (forthcoming). His research has been published in journals, such as Continuum, Senses of Cinema, New Review of Film & Television, Media International Australia and Studies in Australasian Cinema. He is Associate Director of the Creative People, Products and Places (CP3) Research Centre. He is also the co-curator of the Adelaide Queer Film Festival.
Prior to joining the University of South Australia in 2019, he taught screen, media and cultural studies subjects at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. He reviews film and television for ABC North and West SA.

Date Position Institution name
2024 - ongoing Curator Adelaide Queer Film Festival

Year Citation
2025 Luckman, S., Jaworski, K., Ghosh, R., Kosmina, B., Richards, S., Stratton, J., & Pacella, J. (2025). Culture in practice. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 39(1), 1-12.
DOI
2025 Pacella, J., & Richards, S. (2025). A queer feast of memories: using archives in festival research. Continuum, 39(1), 117-133.
DOI Scopus1 WoS1
2023 Richards, S., Pacella, J., & Munro, K. (2023). Comradery and the arts: experiences of senior volunteers in a festival city. Journal of Festival Studies, 5, 326-355.
DOI
2023 Richards, S., & Damiens, A. (2023). Films of the Queer Film Festival. Senses of Cinema, 106, 1-14.
2022 Richards, S., & Pacella, J. (2022). 'We need to keep making stuff, regardless of what the situation is': creativity and the film festival sector during COVID-19. Arts and the Market, 13(1), 20-32.
DOI Scopus11 WoS8
2021 Richards, S., & Carroll Harris, L. (2021). From the event to the everyday: distributor-driven film festivals. Media International Australia, 180(1), 91-100.
DOI
2020 Richards, S. (2020). And then we danced: queer sounds and movement. Senses of Cinema, (94), 1-12.
2019 Richards, S. (2019). More than just a gay pun: the changing nature of Australian queer film criticism. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 13(2-3), 51-66.
DOI Scopus2
2018 Richards, S. (2018). Swapping goats for snakes: Australian survivor, narrative complexity and audience expectations. Metro magazine: media & education magazine, (195), 52-59.
2018 Richards, S. (2018). Reawakening in Yoorana: Glitch and the Australian gothic film. New review of film and television studies, 16(3), 221-237.
DOI Scopus2
2017 Richards, S. (2017). Breaking down the tribes: opening night films at Frameline and Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival. NECSUS: European journal of media studies, 6(2), 197-203.
DOI
2016 Richards, S. (2016). Overcoming the stigma: the queer denial of indiewood. Journal of film and video, 68(1), 19-30.
DOI Scopus12
2016 Richards, S. (2016). Divine dog shit: John Waters and disruptive queer humour in film. Senses of cinema, (80), 1-16.
2016 Richards, S. (2016). Proud in the middleground: how the creative industries allow the Melbourne queer film festival to bring queer content to audiences. Studies in Australasian cinema, 10(1), 129-142.
DOI Scopus7
2016 Richards, S. (2016). A new queer cinema renaissance. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 1(2), 215-229.
DOI
2012 Richards, S. (2012). Frameline's conservative hoax: smashing frameline's homonormative image to reveal a socially empowering organisation. Antithesis, 22, 123-139.

Year Citation
2025 Cover, R., Monaghan, W., McKinnon, S., & Richards, S. (2025). Film, television and streaming media. In R. Cover, & C. E. Newman (Eds.), Source details - Title: Elgar Encyclopaedia of Queer Studies (pp. 153-157). UK: Edward Elgar.
DOI
2024 Richards, S. (2024). 'Is it better to speak or die?': adaptation and Elio's interiority. In E. Lamberti, & M. Williams (Eds.), Source details - Title: Call Me by Your Name: Perspectives on the Film (pp. 58-75). UK: Intellect Books.
DOI
2020 Richards, S. (2020). LGBTQ television programming. In D. L. Merskin (Ed.), Source details - Title: The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society (pp. 945-947). UK: SAGE.
DOI
2019 Monaghan, W., & Richards, S. (2019). Adapting queer shorts to feature films: does size really matter?. In D. Demory, & P. Pamela (Eds.), Source details - Title: Queer/adaptation: a collection of critical essays (pp. 137-154). US: Palgrave Macmillan.
DOI
2016 Richards, S. (2016). The cultural value of peripheral texts in a transmedia narrative: The Simpsons Tapped Out. In P. Drummond (Ed.), Event/exhibition information: Film & media 2016: The Fifth Annual London Film & Media Conference, London, UK, 07/07/2016-09/07/2016
Source details - Title: The London film & media reader 5: questions of cultural value (pp. 318-329). UK: The London Symposium.
2016 Richards, S. (2016). 'Would you like politics with that?' Queer film festival audiences as political consumers. In Source details - Title: Activist film festivals: towards a political subject (pp. 230-245). US: Intellect.

Year Citation
2023 Richards, S. (2023). A Haunting of Venice: a Gothic horror, supernatural, Agatha Christie murder mystery which all becomes quite camp. The Conversation.
2023 Ari, M., Maguire, E., Harrington, E., French, L., Nash, M., Gaunson, S., & Richards, S. (2023). Classic Aussie cinema and new twists on old classics: our picks of December streaming. The Conversation.
2023 Harrington, E., Ford, J., Arrow, M., Richards, S., & Grant, Y. (2023). "Wartime hijinks, wilderness survivors and contemporary dance: what we're streaming this October". The Conversation.
2023 Altman, D., Mattes, A., Harrington, E., Ford, J., McAlister, J., Arrow, M., & Richards, S. (2023). Romantic comedies, Japanese reality television and New Zealand true crime: the best of streaming this September. The Conversation.
2022 Richards, S. (2022). A dystopian Australia, stomach-churning physical humour, and several films with donkeys: the best films of the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival. The Conversation.
2022 Richards, S. (2022). Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile seems to forget Agatha Christie was a master of the murder mystery. The Conversation.
2020 Richards, S. (2020). My best worst film: Pink Flamingos - 'one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made'?. The Conversation.
2020 Richards, S. (2020). Deepfake technology unlocks real stories of LGBTQ persecution in Welcome to Chechnya. The Conversation.
2019 Richards, S. (2019). If Beale Street Could Talk is a sumptuous, emotional follow up to Moonlight. The Conversation.
2019 Richards, S. (2019). Oscars2019 play it safe with Green Book - but don't look to the Academy for enlightened thinking. The Conversation.
2019 Richards, S. (2019). Top end wedding: a new Australian romantic comedy with a sincere sense of place. The Conversation.
2019 Richards, S. (2019). Prototype review: experimental Australian films as poetic diary entries. The Conversation.

Courses I teach

  • COMM 1082 Introduction to Festivals (2025)
  • COMM 3088 Festivals Experience (2025)
  • COMM 3089 The Power of Festivals (2025)
  • HUMS 2045 Understanding Popular Culture (2025)
  • HUMS 3050 Researching Culture (2025)
  • COMM 1082 Introduction to Festivals (2024)
  • COMM 3080 Film, Entertainment and Aesthetics (2024)
  • COMM 3088 Festivals Experience (2024)
  • COMM 3089 The Power of Festivals (2024)
  • HUMS 2045 Understanding Popular Culture (2024)
  • VSAR 2031 Gender, Sexuality, and the Queer Image (2024)

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2025 Co-Supervisor Increasing fictional queer representation through textual intervention. Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Miss Dante Rose Vallen DeBono
2021 Co-Supervisor UNLEASHED: An Investigation Into the Future of Australian Scripted Drama in the Age of Internet-Distributed Television Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mr Matthew George Dabner
2020 Co-Supervisor Queering the fat body: The impact of fatness on queer identities Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Ms Tori Knight

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