Dr. Jana Melkumova Reynolds

Biography

Jana Melkumova-Reynolds is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Her research intertwines theoretical and methodological approaches across the social sciences and the arts and humanities. Her expertise encompasses areas such as time and temporalities, cultural production, material visual culture, and disability studies. She engages with feminist and queer epistemologies and methodologies, employing an embodied, emplaced phenomenology that draws from affect theory and Actor-Network Theory. Jana is particularly interested in the emergence of cultural subjectivities under the conditions of late capitalism, characterized by precarious employment and the aestheticization of everyday life, alongside the increasing imperatives for geographical and professional mobility. She examines counter-emergences and cultural imaginaries that conjure alternative subjectivities and non-normative future-orientations rooted in hope and optimism. In 2024, she launched a platform that unites crip and non-disabled movement artists, academics, and activists to theorize social, political, and cultural ideals aimed at creating spaces for embodied and tacit knowledge. Her background includes over 15 years in the creative industries across four countries, informing her teaching and research. Jana co-leads the MSc in Culture and Society and convenes several core undergraduate and postgraduate courses, welcoming projects focusing on disability studies, crip theory, cultural theory, cultural creative industries, and embodiment.

Research Interests

Courses