Dr Tina Kendall

Courses taught:

• Film (Undergraduate)
• Film and Media (Undergraduate)

Dr Tina Kendall is Associate Professor of Film and Media and Director of Research Students for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Her research spans film, media and cultural theory, with a focus on how ambivalent or ‘minor’ affects—boredom, disgust, apathy, exhaustion—shape spectators’ and users’ experiences across film and digital platforms. Grounded in film and cultural studies approaches to embodied, affective engagement, her work examines the continuities between cinematic and networked viewing practices, focusing particularly on how ‘minor’ or negative feelings infuse everyday encounters with moving images.

Her recent research addresses Internet Aesthetics and Vibes, Brainrot, and Generative AI ‘Slop’, exploring how users create and circulate moods on platforms like TikTok. She has written extensively on affective, intimate and imitation publics on short-form video, bringing film-theoretical insights about gesture, rhythm and atmospheric aesthetics to bear on platform cultures. Challenging assumptions that boredom or ‘low’ media cultures are marginal, her work positions these as central to power, value and participation in networked life.

she/her

[email protected]

Background

Tina Kendall holds a PhD in French Studies and Critical Theory from the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Entertained or Else: Boredom and Networked Media (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), which traces how social media and streaming platforms have capitalised on boredom as part of their psychopolitical address to users. Her earlier scholarship established her reputation in extreme cinema studies, including the co-edited volume The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2011). She has also published on waste, new materialist film-philosophy, and the ethics of cinematic affect. Across cinema and media platforms, her work examines how negative affects and atmospheric intensities shape viewing experiences, from violent extremity on screen, to the flat, scroll-heavy rhythms of platform life.

She contributes to public scholarship, for example, through initiatives like The Boredom Project, which explored young people’s experiences during Covid 19 lockdowns, and her writing for The Conversation. In her work as a Trustee of the Cambridge Film Trust, she supports the work of the Cambridge Film Festival, the Youth Lab, and associated programmes.

Spoken Languages

• English
• French

Research interests

• Everyday Digital Media Cultures and Networked Media
• Internet Aesthetics, Vibes, and Atmospheric Media
• Boredom Studies, Affect Theory and Attention Economies
• Short-form video, platform aesthetics, and TikTok
• AI-Generated Content, AI Slop, and Algorithmic Culture
• Brainrot, Dissociative Aesthetics, and User Agency
• Spectatorship, New Materialist Film-Philosophy, and Extreme Cinemas
• Festival Studies and Film Cultures

Areas of research supervision

• Boredom Studies and Everyday Media Practices
• Internet Aesthetics, Vibes and Atmospheric Media
• Short-form Video Platforms (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts)
• AI-Generated Content, AI Slop, and Algorithmic Cultures
• Brainrot, Dissociative Aesthetics, and Platform Capitalism
• Affect Theory and Minor/Negative Affects in Film and Media
• Extreme Cinema, Violence, and Spectatorship
• Streaming Culture and Postcinema Aesthetics

Teaching

Tina teaches on the following modules:

• Theorising Spectatorship
• Digital Media Theory
• Special Topics in Film
• Research Project in Film and Media

Qualifications

• PhD, French Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, University of California, Davis
• BA (Hons) French & Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

Memberships, editorial boards

• Senior Fellow, Higher Education Association (HEA)
• Member, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)
• Member, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
• Member, British Association for Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)
• Member, Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA)

Selected recent publications

Media

Kendall, T. 2026. ‘Internet Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Anaesthetic Media, from Brainrot to Lobotomycore’ Media Theory (forthcoming).

Kendall, T. 2026. ‘Boring Intimacies: #BoredVibes and the Affective Public-Private’ in Adrienne Evans et al. (eds) Postdigital Intimacies: Relational Lives in the Networked Public-Private (University College London): 45-62.

Kendall, T. 2025. Entertained or Else: Boredom and Networked Media (Bloomsbury Academic).

Kendall, T. 2021. 'From Binge-Watching to Binge-Scrolling: TikTok and the Rhythms of #LockdownLife' Film Quarterly 75.1: pp. 41-46

Kendall, T., 2019. '(Not) Doing it for the Vine: #Boredom Vine Videos and the Biopolitics of Gesture'. Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies Autumn 2019.

Horeck, T., Jenner, M., Kendall, T., 2018. 'On Binge-Watching: Nine Critical Propositions'. Critical Studies in Television, 13.4: pp. 499-504.

Kendall, T., 2018. 'BOREDWITHMEG': Gendered Boredom and Networked Media. New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, 93, pp. 80-100.

Kendall, T., 2016. Nyan Cat: Nothing Happens, Longer, Again. MediaCommons: In Media Res, 'Speed', 22 February 2016.

Horeck, T., Kendall, T., 2014. Extreme Memes: O-Faces, Paper Bags, and the Paratexts of Nymph()maniac. MediaCommons: In Media Res, 'Extreme Cinema', 6 May 2014.

Horeck, T., Kendall, T., 2014. Idiot Media: The Culture of NekNomination Videos. MediaCommons: In Media Res, 'Circulating Pain', 2 April 2014.

Film

Kendall, T. (Ed.), 2016. In Focus: Cinematic Speed. Cinema Journal, 55(2).

Kendall, T., 2016. 'The Aesthetics and Ethics of Snuff in the Films of the New Extremism'. In: Jackson, N., Kimber, S., Walker, J, Watson, T. (Eds.), 2016. Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (London: Bloomsbury).

Kendall, T., 2013. 'No God But Cinema': Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch. Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, 17(4), pp. 405-413.

Kendall, T., 2013. 'Cinematic Affect and the Ethics of Waste'. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 10(1), pp. 45-61.

Horeck, T., Kendall, T., 2013. The New Extremisms: Re-Thinking Extreme Cinema. Cinephile, 8(2), pp. 7-9.

Kendall, T., 2012. 'The Still Life: DVD Stills Galleries and the Digital Uncanny'. In: Hubner, L. and Allen, S. (Eds.). Framing Film: Cinema and the Visual Arts. London: Intellect, pp. 113-126.

Kendall, T. (Ed.), 2012. 'Tarrying with Disgust'. Special issue of Film-Philosophy, 15(1).

Horeck, T., Kendall, T. (Eds.), 2011. The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Kendall, T., 2010. 'The "In-Between of Things": Intermediality in Ratcatcher'. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 8(2), pp. 179-197.

Recent presentations and conferences

Top of the Slops: A Guided Tour through Brainrot and Slopcore (Brainrot, AI Slop, and the Enshittification of the Internet Symposium, organised by Tina Kendall, ARU December 2025)

#Liminalcore Aesthetics: Feeling In-Between in the age of Vibes Capitalism (Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, 2025)

Inhabitable Ludotopias, Then and Now (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, April 2023)

Bored in the (Hybrid) House: TikTok as Ludotopia in a Time of Crisis (In Between Media: Hybrid Tactics in the Crisis Era, Institute of Network Cultures, University of Amsterdam, March 2023)

Staying Connected to Stay Safe: Bored and Social Media Literacy in a High-Speed Society (Making Sense of High-Speed Society Symposium, Warwick University, January 2022)

Panel Speaker (with B. Ruby Rich, Neta Alexander, Kartik Nair and Tanya Horeck) in Film Quarterly webinar Reconsidering Binge-watching in the Age of COVID-19. This event emerged out of our collaboration on a special section of Film Quarterly on ‘Rethinking Binge-watching in the Age of COVID-19’ (2021)

Bingeing for Britain: Boredom, TikTok and #Lockdownlife (Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2021)

Bored Media, Virality and #Lockdownlife (Affect & Social Media 4.5: Media Virality and the Lockdown Aesthetic, University of East London, July 2020)

Gestures of Boredom (On Gesture: Approaches & Questions, Coventry University, May 2019)

The Evolving Technologies of Death on Film…And Beyond (Offscreen Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium, May 2019)

Boring Entertainment: Television’s Ambient Turn (New Media Affects Symposium, University of Birmingham May 2017)

Binge Watching Boring Entertainment (Trans TV Conference, University of Westminster September 2017)

Logging in and Zoning Out: Netflix, Napflix, and the Ends of Sleep (Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2017)

LaBeouf, Rönkkǒ, Turner and the Aesthetics of Waiting (Celebrity Studies Conference, June 2016)

Shia LeBeouf, Deceleration and Temporal Drag (Speeding and Braking: Navigating Acceleration Symposium, Goldsmiths, University of London, May 2016)

Networked Boredom: Loops, Lists, and the Management of Affect Across Digital Networks (Bland, Boring, Banal Symposium, University of Amsterdam December 2015)

Media experience

Quoted in (2024) ‘Cambridge Film Festival and Anglia Ruskin University Forge a Landmark Educational Partnership’ Cambridge Network, 16 September.

Kendall, Tina (2024) 'Inside Out 2 introduces Ennui – here's what the character teaches us about boredom' The Conversation, 18 June. (Translated into Portuguese and Indonesian).

Quoted in Pastore, Karina (2024) ‘Ennui, the “blasé” emotion from the film “Inside Out 2”, reignites the debate on boredom and digital media’ NeoFeed, 7 July.

Quoted in Plett, Christina, (2023) ‘I watched “Friends”. The whole thing. On TikTok’ Zeit Newspaper, 25 December.

Appearance, Social Media and the Boredom Pandemic (British Science Festival, ARU Chelmsford, September 2021)

Quoted in (2022) ‘What makes us bored? Psychologists explain why there's nothing dull about studying boredom’ i Newspaper, 29 March. Available at: 

Quoted in Dunderdale, Louise (2020) 'Young Essex adults are asked to share their boredom Covid-19 pandemic experiences’ Dunmow Broadcast 6 August.

Quoted in Steele, Francesca (2020) ‘What is driving the rise in extreme cinema?’ The Spectator, 21 March.