Inaugural Professorial Lecture by Professor Karen McNally
4 December 2025
In this inaugural lecture introduced by London Met Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive Professor Julie Hall, Professor Karen McNally outlined her ongoing research into the almost 50-year career and public life of actress and Hollywood star Lana Turner. The project aims to both uncover the significance of a career that in recent decades has been undervalued and delimited in public discourse, and to fill in gaps in our approach to and understanding of America’s film and television histories by centring the female experience.
Examining both on- and off-screen lives, Karen pointed to elements of her current research that highlight the specificity of women’s lived experiences inside Hollywood and beyond, as well as the broader structural relationships that continue to form the context in which their professional lives occur. These historical narratives and their direct paths to the contemporary world make them essential to the ways we view America’s past and present. This research is being conducted towards a historical biography of Lana Turner supported by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship.
Karen McNally is Professor of Film, Television and Cultural History at London Metropolitan University and a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow. Her research centres on issues of gender, class, race and American identity related to stardom, Hollywood and American television, and US history, politics and culture. She is an author and editor of six books, the latest of which – Women in Hollywood’s Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance – publishes with University of Illinois Press in March 2026.
