Ellen Pullar graduated with a PhD in Media, Film and Communication and Art History in December 2012. She completed her PhD through a co-tutelle arrangement with the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Her thesis looked at the intersections between femininity, national identity and the notion of modernness in the output of the French and Hollywood star systems of the 1930s.
After graduating Ellen worked for the Blue Oyster Art Project Space in Dunedin for eighteen months, and taught a Summer School course for the History and Art History department.
She is now employed as Publicist for the New Zealand Film Archive, and has been based at the NZFA's Wellington head office since late 2012. The NZFA aims to collect, protect and connect New Zealand's audiovisual heritage with the widest possible audience - a cause Ellen believes in passionately. Her job involves liaising with the media and the Archive's diverse audiences, helping to organise screenings and events, and producing the NZFA's online and print publications. As somebody who has always been a film history buff at heart, she loves that her job gives her ample opportunities to see historic and silent films!