Anna is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, an ambitious media sociologist specialising in conducting audience research with marginalised communities, and a scholar with several years of experience in teaching at University level. She received her PhD at the University of Leicester under its Graduate Teaching Assistantship Scheme at the School of Media, Communication, and Sociology (4 years of full support, equivalent value to AHRC funding), and has published several journal articles as well as a monograph. Anna is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a media expert with management experience in film distribution. She earned her BA in Media Studies and MA in Teaching Literature and Grammar in Hungary, and her MLitt in Film Studies from the University of Dundee, Scotland.
As a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Anna is examining social media use among LGBTQ+ citizens in Hungary where LGBTQ+ minorities have been gradually stripped of their rights since the rise of illiberalism in 2010, resulting in either intensifying domestic activism or exile to the West. By using life story interviews and digital ethnography, this project investigates LGBTQ+ communities’ digital media usage in the changing Hungarian political environment, offering original contributions to communication, media, gender, LGBTQ+ studies, and political science.
Anna’s doctoral research explores the heterogeneity of the diverse audiences through the participants’ ambivalent and sometimes even contradictory ideas about their identity. It combines diverse and innovative research methods, such as textual (thematic) analysis of the interviews and visual (semiotic) examination of Eastern European tween’s drawings and building blocks, and the broader contextual investigation of the sessions with Hungarian young people by using NVivo. Her study offers an original contribution to the fields of audience, communication, cultural, film, gender, media and race studies, and sociology.
In 2019, Anna participated as a Research Associate in the €2 million ERC-funded multidisciplinary project , which aimed to empower British children and young people through play and discussion of the benefits of using the law in navigating life by employing multimodal research methods and participatory mapping approach.
As a University Teacher at 天堂视频 between 2021 and 2023, Anna taught several modules to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, including Advanced Research Methods; Constructing Meaning: Text and Audiences; Digital Economies; Introduction to Communication and Media; Media and Social Change; Media, Identity and Inequality; Media Landscapes; Politics of Representation; Television and Society, while she acted as a placement tutor to 48 students.
Previously, as a lecturer at Coventry University and DMU and as a GTA at the University of Leicester, she taught several modules in media and communication, including Understanding Media Configurations and Post-Digital Regions (Coventry University), Researching Media and Communication; Women, Media and Politics and Core Concepts in Media and Communication (DMU), and Global Film Culture; Creative Audiences; Researching Media and Public Communication; Contemporary Issues in Media and Culture Studies; Media and Globalisation; Television Studies; Studying Film, Global Film Culture and Media, Celebrity and Fan Culture (University of Leicester).
Manuscript
- Zsubori, A. (2024). Disney Princesses and Tween Identity: The Franchise in Illiberal Hungary. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books. Order here:
Journal Articles
In Progress
- Leguina, A., Zsubori, A. and Poblete-Lagos, C. Power and diversity in the English field of cultural production: A relational analysis of 2018-22 National Portfolio Organisations.
Published
- Zsubori, A. (2023) The Good, the Bad and the Disney: Employing princesses to examine Hungarian tweens’ understanding of gender, in European Journal of Cultural Studies. Download here:
- Zsubori, A. (2022) Review of Reality, magic and other lies: fairy-tale film truths, in Feminist Media Studies. Download here:
- Zsubori, A. (2022). Review of Recasting the Disney Princess in an Era of New Media and Social Movements, in Feminist Media Studies. Download here:
- Zsubori, A. (2021) ‘They are not like [...] Pamela Hódi [...] constantly showing off’ - How Hungarian tweens negotiate fame through Disney Princesses', in Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Download here:
- Zsubori, A. and Das, Ranjana (2018). Twenty years of Pottermania: British young people's experiences of fantasy at the intersections of the fictive and the “real”, Journal of Children and Media. Download here:
- Zsubori, A. (2018). Gender studies banned at university – the Hungarian government’s latest attack on equality in The Conversation. Link here: