Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture (Routledge 2021) co-edited by UCD Professor Diane Negra, has won the 2022 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Best Edited Collection Award.  

The MeCCSA Awards recognise outstanding research in media, communication, and cultural studies. The winners of the 2022 Awards were announced this month during the MeCCSA Annual Conference, hosted by Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Diane Negra is Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture at University College Dublin. The winning collection, co-edited with Dr Mary Harrod of the University of Warwick and Professor Suzanne Leonard of Simmons University, explores twenty-first century couple culture and perceived threats to social bonding on a global scale.

Looking at a variety of media sites—including film, television, popular print fiction, new media and new technologies, it examines how mediated scenes of intimacy proliferate, while real-life experiences are cast in a newly uncertain light. 

This timely collection challenges a latent but growing tendency towards perceptions of romantic decline, in a variety of cultural contexts and with attention to the impact of COVID-19.　

Negra is the author, editor or co-editor of thirteen books. Her work in media, gender and cultural studies has been widely influential and awarded. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, she has served as Guest Professor at Brown University, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Reims and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She serves as Chair of the Fulbright Commission in Ireland and of the Royal Irish Academy Working Group on Culture and Heritage.

Further information on the collection can be found here.