Dr Jolene Mairs Dyer

Overview

Before Ulster

Dr Jolene Mairs Dyer studied English Literature at the University of Sunderland before spending a year living and working in Toronto, Canada. She returned to Northern Ireland where she worked in the Northern Ireland Housing Executive before completing a Masters of Social Work (MSW) at Queen’s University, Belfast. She briefly worked in Child Protection services before moving into the field of Mental Health.

In England, she worked in a private secure hospital for women before working for the NHS in an outpatient therapy service providing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Analytic therapeutic groupwork. Alongside this she began making documentary films (her first film was screened at short film festival in Belfast) and returned to Northern Ireland to complete a Masters in Documentary Practice at Ulster University.

This led to her PhD, which combined her experience as a Mental Health professional with her interest in film via her practice-led PhD in documentary filmmaking: ‘Audiovisual Storytelling in Post-conflict Northern Ireland. Participant and audience responses to filming, editing and exhibiting memories of the Troubles via two practice-led collaborative documentary film productions’.

She began working as a Lecturer in Media Production at Ulster University in 2013 after completing her PhD.

Teaching

Dr Mairs Dyer has taught editing theory and practice with an emphasis on key theoretical and technical developments from the silent era through to the present. She has taught Media and Mental Health, focussing how mental health is represented across TV, film and print media as well as the impact of social media on its users. She has also taught Research Methods with an emphasis on key research skills such as literature reviews and textual analysis. In addition, she has taught Counter Screens, a module that familiarises students with the characteristics of dominant and ‘counter’ cinema. Dr Mairs Dyer currently teaches the history, theory and practice of documentary as well the history, theory and practice of feminist film production. She also currently teaches Screen Analysis, where she introduces students to core research methods such as semiotics and ideological analysis.

Dr Mairs Dyer’s pedagogic approach promotes student-centred, active learning, particularly in relation to large group teaching. She completed the PgCHEP at Ulster University in 2016, which solidified her belief in the necessity of interactivity as a tool to consolidate learning.  She actively encourages students to operationalize and consolidate key concepts and skills in order to promote Bigg’s (1999: 60) notion of ‘deep learning’ whereby ‘meaning is not imposed or transmitted by direct instruction but is created by the student’s learning activities.’ She has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) since 2016.

Dr Mairs Dyer has collaborated with Dr Helen Jackson, Philip O’Neill and undergraduate students to create Risky Business (2017) an interactive online teaching tool that improves student engagement with, and knowledge of, the risk assessment process in creative filmmaking projects.  It won the 2018 International MEDEA Award for user-generated content.

Dr Mairs Dyer partnered with Antoine Rivoire in Ulster’s Digital Programme and Innovation Office to create the unique Online Ethical and Location Risk Assessment Approval System (OELRAAS), an online digital tool that combines ethical approval with location risk assessment practice for film production. This system has been fully integrated into Screen Production’s equipment lending and risk assessment processes and practices. This system has been adopted by Cinematic Arts on Magee campus and by Digital Media Production on Coleraine campus.

Research

Dr Mairs Dyer has research interests in collaborative documentary filmmaking/creative practice with marginalized groups. As part of her PhD research, she produced two collaborative documentary films. She filmed and edited Unheard Voices (2009), a 30min documentary telling the stories of six people who lost a loved one or were themselves injured as a result of the Troubles.

She also edited material from Cahal McLaughlin’s Prisons Memory Archive to create Unseen Women: Stories from Armagh Gaol (2011), a 26min documentary and multi-screen gallery installation shown at Belfast Exposed in June 2011. She extended to this to her collaborative visual practice with women living in interface areas of North Belfast to co-create the photobooks, Women's Vision from Across the Barricades (2015) and Women’s Vision in Transition (2020), which are part of the Martin Parr photobook collection in the Tate Modern, London.

More recently, she has co-produced 360° films with Vincent Kinnaird of Notasuch Productions, Total Immersion (2022) and The Beat Goes On (2022). This on-going collaboration has resulted in the production of a short documentary, I’m from the Road (2025), co-created with Vincent Kinnaird and the Marion Centre for Excellence, an educational organization that provides flexible learning pathways for young people. Dr Mairs Dyer’s research interests in feminist film practice and immersive filmmaking has resulted in the creation of the 360° horror-style short film Crow (2025), which highlights on-street sexual harassment.

Dr. Mairs Dyer's theoretical research has resulted in her development of the concept of the Matrixial Screen Encounter, which uses psychoanalytic theory to conceptualize the  intersubjective gaze in documentary filmmaking and offers a novel model of theorizing collective filmic authorship.

Dr Mairs Dyer is currently an Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Media Practice and Education.

She welcomes applications from practice-led and theoretical PhD students, particularly those that are interested in using documentary/feminist/creative research methods as a means of representing marginalized groups.

Civic Work

As a collaborative, practice-led practitioner, Dr Mairs Dyer’s research is rooted in civic contribution. Her practice-led PhD research was embedded in work with community organisations, most notably with WAVE Trauma, a charity that supports people affected by the Troubles. Screenings of her work have taken place in community settings across Northern Ireland, the UK and the US. Her projects Women's Vision from Across the Barricades (2015)and Women’s Vision in Transition (2020) saw her work with Shankill Women’s Centre and the Greater North Belfast Women’s Network.

Dr. Mairs Dyer also plays an active role in creative and academic communities. She currently serves as the Northern Ireland Coordinator for the Global Media Monitoring Project. She has twice served as an Executive Committee member of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS). She has acted as Jury Member for the Maysles Award for Best Observational Documentary at Docs Ireland International Film Festival. She regularly chairs post-screening discussion and Q&A’s with documentary filmmakers at this festival.

Since 2022, Dr Mairs Dyer has acted as the Director of Belfast Feminist Film School, a civic film education programme that provides training, equipment and access to postproduction software to women who would otherwise be unable to access HE-level resources. BFFS works with women from a wide range of backgrounds in partnership with community groups such as Shankill Women’s Centre, Women’s Resource and Development Agency and Film Hub NI. BFFS’s model of civic engagement is unique in that it actively invests in the communities it serves.