Liz is a researcher and practitioner whose main interests are in the theory, history and practice of film sound. Other research centres on videographic criticism, archival studies, production studies, and documentary studies. Liz is an editor of Music, Sound, and the Moving Image and regularly publishes research in written and videographic forms. In 2022, Liz’s audiovisual essay, The Elephant Man’s Sound, Tracked  won the Videographic Film Criticism award from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and jointly won the inaugural Screen Conference Audience Audiovisual Essay award. In 2023, Liz’s audiovisual essay, Spencer Bell, Nobody Knows My Name, recieved the most votes in the British Film Institute (BFI) Sight and Sound journal’s poll for Best Video Essays of 2022.

Liz is an Associate Professor in Film and Sonic Arts at Northumbria University and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading working on a project about The Wizard of Oz universe. Liz is also completing the edit for a feature length social documentary film that stemmed from the research project, Brews and Brows: Shaping Stories from Eyebrows to Scousebrows.

Since 2001, Liz has worked as a sound trainee, boom operator, sound recordist, editor, mixer and designer in the Irish film and television industries, including working on the multi-award winning drama series Pure Mule, which received an Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) Award for best sound in film and television at the 2006 awards ceremony.

Liz has over 15 years experience teaching theory, history and practice in Film Studies in Higher Education in the UK and Ireland and regularly delivers guest lectures, masterclasses and workshops on sound and the audiovisual essay.