WILLIAM BROWN (Associate Professor of Film, D.Phil. University of Oxford). William joined UBC from the University of Roehampton, London, in January 2022, having previously taught at the University of St Andrews, the University of Oxford and New York University Abu Dhabi. He is both a scholar and a maker of films, with work spanning fiction, documentary, the video-essay and hybrids of all three.

His current research focuses primarily on film-philosophy, digital media, posthumanism and critical race theory. His latest monograph is Infinite Ontologies of the Chthulustream: Posthumanism and Racial Capital in Contemporary Streaming Media (with David H. Fleming, Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Previous books include Navigating from the White Anthropocene to the Black Chthulucene (Zer0 Books, 2023), The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia (with David H. Fleming, Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Non-Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking and the Multitude (Bloomsbury, 2018; nominated by the British Association of Film and Television Studies Society for Best Monograph of 2018), Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (Berghahn, 2013), Deleuze and Film (co-edited with David Martin-Jones, Edinburgh University Press, 2012), and Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe (with Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, College Gate Press, 2010). He has edited special issues of Film-Philosophy (with Mila Zuo, 2025), Studies in Latin American Cinemas (with David Martin-Jones and M. Soledad Montañez, 2019), Frames Cinema Journal (2015), and animation: an interdisciplinary journal (with Jenna P.-S. Ng, 2012). He has also published numerous essays in journals and edited collections, and currently serves as the book reviews editor of Studies in European Cinema and Film-Philosophy.

Recent examples of William’s filmmaking include App 666, which premiered at the 2024 Small File Media Festival in Vancouver, and Cake and Death, which premiered at the 2024 DOXA Film Festival. Other works include This is Cinema, which premiered in 2021 at the IndieCork Film Festival; Golden Gate, which was among the Sight & Sound Video-Essays of the Year in 2020; #randomaccessmemory, which was named among the Sight & Sound Video-Essays of the Year in 2018; Circle/Line, which premiered at the East End Film Festival in 2017; Selfie (2014); Common Ground, which  was nominated for the American Online Film Awards 2014; Afterimages, which premiered at CPH PIX in 2011, and which was included in the Sight & Sound Films of the Year from 2010; and  En Attendant Godard, which also premiered at CPH PIX in 2010, and which was one of esteemed film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Top Five Films of 2009. His video-essays and essay-films have been published in [in]Transition, Screenworks and Annals of Cross Cuts.

William has been a keynote speaker at various conferences and symposia in Europe, Asia and the Americas, while also giving numerous talks about his filmmaking practice at festivals and universities across the world. He has spoken several times at the Cinematheque and the Vancouver International Film Festival, having also been a regular speaker at the British Film Institute, especially as part of their Philosophical Screens series. His teaching includes both film production and film history/theory, and before joining UBC he supervised to successful completion five PhD dissertations, three of which combine practice and theory.