About the researcher

Kern Robinson is a first year PhD student researching the representations of otherness in Folk Horror film and literature. He has published and presented on haunted family structures, the repression of counter-cultural ideology, and depictions of Satan in classic and contemporary Folk Horror texts. Future projects include a presentation of the depiction of the rural working classes in The Wicker Man (1973) and The Third Day (2020) at the Dark Economies Conference in Falmouth and The Contemporary Folk Horror in Film and Media Conference at Leeds Beckett University.

Kern Robinson PGR researcher profile picture
Kern Robinson PGR researcher profile picture

PhD abstract

Thesis title

Folk Horror Otherness and the British Counter-Culture

Abstract

Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and literature arguably founded in the UK in the late 1960s and is largely preoccupied with nature and the rural communities found within. It often depicts the inevitably violent interplay between an enlightened, usually urbanized person, and the 'others' of these rural communities. Often, these people are represented as violent, barbaric, with heretical religious beliefs. My thesis intends to investigate the representations of these 'other' people through a wide range of theoretical models to update and broaden the concept of the folk horror 'other'.

Researcher bio

Research interests

Folk Horror film and literature; ecology, particularly ecohorror, queer ecology, and posthuman ecology; counter-cultural movements.