Dr Agata Frymus is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Monash University Malaysia. She was named the leading researcher in film in The Australian 2025 top 250 ranking. 

Before joining Monash, she was a Marie Skłodowska Curie postdoctoral fellow (under Horizon 2020) at Ghent University, Belgium, where she was a principal investigator on Black Cinema-Going in New York during the Interwar Period (2018-2020).

She is the author of Damsels and Divas: European Stardom in Silent Hollywood (Rutgers University Press, 2020). The book explores the personae of three stars of the silent era: Vilma Banky, Pola Negri and Jetta Goudal.

She serves as a submissions editor for Early Popular Visual Culture.

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PROJECTS

[3] Sustainability and Cinematic Heritage in Malaysia and Singapore (2022-2024). Principal Investigator. Co-investigators: Chrishandra Sebastiampillai, Thaatch Kananatu. Monash University Malaysia ECR Intra-School Grant. 70,000RM

[2] Malaysian Moviegoing in Kuala Lumpur during the 1970s (2020-2021). Principal Inverstigator. Monash University Malaysia, School of Arts and Social Sciences. 15,000RM

[1] Black Cinema-going in New York during the Interwar Period (2018- 2020). Principal Investigator. Marie Sklodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, grant no. 792629, EU under Horizon 2020.  160,800€

Dr Frymus’ main interests lie in film history, star studies and silent cinema.

Her work focuses on the intersections between race, ethnicity, stardom, and audiences, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. She is interested in bringing women - both as consumers of film, as well as producers and stars - to the forefront of film history.

Dr Agata is interested in supervising projects relating to feminism, race, and film history, broadly defined.

Current PhD students

2022 Choo Sum Lee, "Kawaii Kayfabe: Co-construction and Negotiation of Indonesian VTuber Talents’ Fictive Realities." With A/Prof Olivia Khoo (Monash Australia) and Dr Jonathan Driskell

2023 Jeanette Goon, "Disturbance of Medical Understandings of the Female Body in a Modern Postcolony." With Dr Jonathan Driskell

I convene and deliver the following units:

AMU1304 Television Studies: Forms and Approaches (discontinued)
AMU1223 Film, TV and Screen Studies: Approaches 
AMU2448 Film Genres
AMU3021 Audience Studies: Sources and Methods 

Guest lectures:
ATS3985 Screening Europe: Transnational histories, narratives and identities (at Monash Prato campus, Italy)

PREVIOUS TEACHING EXPERIENCE
FATV10006 Filmmaking Through Hitchock (at University of Bristol, UK), in 2017/2018
TFT00023C Cinema: History and Analysis (at University of York, UK), in 2016 - 2018