I am 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. I am an editor of Music, Sound, and the Moving Image and I regularly publish research in written and videographic forms. In 2022, my 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, received the most votes in the British Film Institute (BFI) Sight and Sound journal’s poll for Best Video Essays of 2022, and won the 2023 Videographic Film Criticism award from BAFTSS.

I am 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. I am 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, I have 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.

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