This approach to performance situates representation within a larger dynamic of Hollywood's production strategies and reorients the existing practices of film criticism within the context of an emphasis on performance rather than narrative. Further research looks at issues in gender and investigates both the 'difference' across representational boundaries and the negotiation between the assumed 'norms' of representation and those of femininity and masculinity. Representations of gender are seen as becoming a multifarious negotiation between the film industry at specific historical moments in its production, the culture that informs it and the audience that consumes it. The need to see movies in terms of the history of the moment in which they are made and in term of the way they negotiate, debate, discuss and at times subvert the culture of which they are a part is central. Future research is in the planning stage looking into areas of region and representation and in relation to the postmodern in television's representations of the 'new woman'.
Publication is under discussion as a joint venture between colleagues in Media and Film.
Attention is paid in particular to the phenomena of 'modernism' and 'postmodernism' as they have impacted upon geographical thought, and to the shifting conceptions of time and space present in the writings of philosophers, cultural critics and historians. A different strand of research considers the process of 'modernisation' which shaped the nation-states of Europe of the 1920s and '30s, attempting to reveal the differing cultural attributes of this process associated with the differing regional contexts in which it occurred. Dr Sumner is a founder member of the Centre for Australian Studies in Wales, which is housed in Lampeter. Dr Sumner is also a Past President of the British Australian Studies Association . Lecturer in Geography Flows of refugees and asylum seekers have emerged as one of the principle geo-political issues of the 20th century and in particular the late 20th century.