Dr Jana Melkumova-Reynolds

Dr Jana Melkumova-Reynolds

Assistant Professor in Sociology

Department of Sociology

Room No
OLD.M3.09
Office Hours
Tuesday 15.30-16.30, Friday 14.30-15.30
Connect with me

Languages
English, French, Russian
Key Expertise
Cultural Work, Fashion, Time, Disability Studies, Embodiment, Affect Theory

About me

Jana Melkumova-Reynolds is a cultural sociologist whose research straddles together theoretical and methodological approaches from the social sciences and from the arts and humanities. Her areas of expertise include time and temporalities, cultural production, material and visual culture, and disability studies. Her work in these areas is underpinned by feminist and queer epistemologies and methodologies. Embodied and emplaced, it is rooted in phenomenology and draws on affect theory and ANT.

Expertise Details

Cultural Work; Fashion; Time; Disability Studies; Embodiment; Affect Theory

Selected publications

Articles and book chapters

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2024) Making space for the wimp-subject in contact improvisationChoreographic Practices 15 (1): 17-36.

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2024) ‘On the cusp of something huge’: Anticipatory subjectivities in freelance fashion workTime & Society (OpenAccess)

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2024) On Crutches, Choreography and (Crip) Care: Curative Objects and Palliative Things in Two Performance Pieces. In: Woolley, D., Johnstone, F., Sampson, E. and Chambers, P. (Eds). Wearable Objects and Curative Things: Materialist Approaches to the Intersections of Fashion, Art, Health and Medicine. London: Palgrave Macmillan 

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2023) "Let Me Be Your Stimy Toy”: Fashioning Disability, Cripping Fashion. In: Mahawatte, R., Willson, J. (Eds), Dangerous Bodies: New Global Perspectives on Fashion and Transgression.  Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body. London: Palgrave Macmillan 

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2022) How the East Was Worn: Negotiating National Heritage in the First Issues of Vogue Ukraine and Vogue Russia. In: R. Findlay and J. Reponen (Eds.). Insights on Fashion Journalism. London: Routledge

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2021) From Bag to “It”-bag: The “Consecration” of Sophie Hulme’s Tote Design. In: E. Paulicelli, V. Manlow, & E. Wissinger (Eds.). The Routledge Companion to Fashion Studies. New York: Routledge  

Burton, L. and Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2020) ”My leg is a giant stiletto heel”: Fashioning the prosthetic body. In: M. Barnard (Ed). Fashion Theory: A Reader, 2nd edition. London: Routledge

Burton, L. and Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2019) ”My leg is a giant stiletto heel”: Fashioning the prosthetic body. Fashion Theory: Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, 23 (2) DOI 10.1080/1362704X.2019.1567061

Melkumova-Reynolds, J. (2019) ”This guy is such a machine!”: Gendering the prosthetic body. In: B. Braid and H. Muzaffar (Eds.). Bodies in Flux: Embodiments at the End of Anthropocentrism. Leiden: Brill 

Research

Jana is interested in the emergence of subjectivities under the (cultural) conditions of late capitalism, characterised by precarious employment, the aestheticisation of everyday life, growing imperatives to embrace and enact geographical, social and professional mobility, and the injunction to manage incalculable risks while retaining an affective investment in the future. She is also interested in counter-emergences; in cultural imaginaries and practices that conjure alternative subjectivities, non-normative ways of being, and future-orientations premised on ‘hope without optimism’. This informs her recent focus on queer and crip utopias.

In 2024, Jana launched Embodied Theory Lab, a platform that brings together crip and non-disabled movement artists, academics and activists to think through theoretical concepts and social, political and cultural idea(l)s in ways that make space for embodied, uncodified, tacit and practice-based knowledges. Using crip communities’ lived experiences as a ‘body of knowledge’, the project aims to conjure socialities, relationalities and shared temporalities premised on interdependence, response-ability and radical care, through a series of movement- and theory-based workshops.

Prior to academia, Jana worked in the creative industries across four countries for over 15 years, and this experience informs both her teaching and her research.

Jana is part of the Knowledge, Culture and Technology research cluster.

Teaching and PhD supervision

Jana leads the MSc Culture and Society where she convenes the core course on Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms. She also convenes both undergraduate and  postgraduate qualitative research methods courses. 

Jana welcomes projects that focus on disability studies and crip theory, cultural theory, cultural and creative industries, queer theory, embodiment, time and temporalities. Her current PhD students are Danielle Cutts, Matt Reynolds, David Ilkiw, Maria Persu and Zaina Salama.