Dr Maria Brock
Research Associate
- brockm2@cardiff.ac.uk
- Two Central Square, Central Square, Cardiff, CF10 1FS
Overview
Broadly speaking, my research evaluates the psychosocial dynamics of transitional and post-transitional societies in the former Eastern Bloc, and the former GDR and Russia in particular, focusing on issues of representation, nationhood, memory and gender. Previous and upcoming publications have reflected on the role of language and affect in reactions to the case of Pussy Riot, the status of memory objects and ‘museums of the everyday’ in the proliferation of post-socialist nostalgia in East Germany, the critical potential of irony and satire, and cinema and the Real.
Prior to joining Cardiff in 2018, I was a fellow at the London School of Economics & Political Science, a research fellow at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Baltic & East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University, Sweden. I hold an MSc in Social & Cultural Psychology (LSE) and a PhD in Psychosocial Studies (Birkbeck).
Publications
2023
- Noonan, C. and Brock, M. 2023. Screen agencies as cultural intermediaries: Delivering gender equality in the film and television sectors?. European Journal of Cultural Studies 26(3), pp. 408-427. (10.1177/13675494221134342)
2020
- Brock, M. and Edenborg, E. 2020. 'You cannot oppress those who do not exist': Gay persecution in Chechnya and the politics of in/visibility. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 26(4), pp. 673-700., article number: GLQ (2020) 26 (4): 673–700. (10.1215/10642684-8618730)
2019
- Brock, M. 2019. East German museums of everyday history as depots for the nostalgic object. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 24(2), pp. 151-174. (10.1057/s41282-019-00120-0)
- Brock, M. 2019. Pussy riot, or the return of the repressed in discourse. In: Kruger, S., Figli, F. and Richards, B. eds. Fomenting Political Violence Fantasy, Language, Media, Action. Studies in the Psychosocial Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 57-74.
2018
- Brock, M. 2018. Political satire and its disruptive potential: irony and cynicism in Russia and the US. Culture, Theory and Critique 59(3), pp. 281-298. (10.1080/14735784.2018.1496843)
- Brock, M. 2018. Cultural diversity in the former Eastern Bloc: The Wende Museum of the Cold War in Los Angeles. Baltic Worlds 11(1), pp. 77-79.
- Brock, M. 2018. Representing the unrepresentable: Slavoj Žižek and political terror in cinema’. In: Sjoholm, C. ed. Slavoj Zizek. Samtidsanalyser och teoretiska interventioner. Stockholm: Tankekraft, pp. 155-174.
2016
- Brock, M. 2016. The hyperrealities of Putin and Trump: Why it is worth paying attention to the public personas of political leaders. Baltic Worlds 9(4), pp. 83-87.
- Brock, M. 2016. A psychosocial analysis of reactions to Pussy Riot: Velvet Revolution or Frenzied Uteri. Subjectivity 9(2), pp. 126-144. (10.1057/sub.2016.5)
- Brock, M. 2016. Reading formations of subjectivity: From discourse to psyche. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10(3), pp. 125-135. (10.1111/spc3.12241)
2012
- Brock, M. and Truscott, R. 2012. “What's the difference between a melancholic apartheid moustache and a nostalgic GDR telephone?”. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 18(3), pp. 318-328. (10.1037/a0029073)