Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

Sorcha Ní Fhlainn is an Irish academic who specializes in vampire fiction, horror film, and gothic studies. She is Reader in Film Studies and Co-Director of the Screen Studies Network at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was chair of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies from 2021 until 2022. Among her works are The Worlds of Back to the Future (2010) and Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (2019), the latter for which she won the 2020 Lord Ruthven Award in Non-Fiction.

Biography
She obtained her BA in Arts (History and Politics) and MA in American Studies from University College Dublin, before obtaining her MA in Higher Education at Manchester Metropolitan University and PhD in English at Trinity College Dublin; her doctoral dissertation was I am the Dark Mirror; the vampire of my own heart": the postmodern vampire in fiction, film and culture 1975-2008 (2009). She later joined Manchester Metropolitan University, eventually becoming Reader in Film Studies.

As an academic, she specializes in vampire fiction, horror film, and gothic studies. She won the 2020 Lord Ruthven Award in Non-Fiction for her book Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture. She served as chair of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies from 2021 until 2022. She was a 2023 winner of the British Association for American Studies Research Assistance Awards for her project "It’s About Time: the creative partnership of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale". In addition to teaching, she is also Co-Director of the Screen Studies Network at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has also appeared as a commentator and interviewee for the BBC, TG4, and TRT World, as well as a documentary consultant.

She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She describes herself as "a huge music fan with eclectic taste from Irish traditional fusion to classic rock (and Hair/Heavy Metal), [who also] foster[s] a particular love of all things rooted in the 1980s (including its music and film scores!)".