ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2826-0990
Scopus Author ID: 26324635900
Google Scholar Profile: ECofBVAAAAAJ

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Richard Allen’s research interests as a scholar began in the areas of film theory and the philosophy of film. His first book, Projecting Illusion (Cambridge University Press, 1997), articulated a sophisticated version of the illusion theory of representation as a basis for defending a psychoanalytic conception of spectatorship. He also edited with Murray Smith the first anthologyof analytic film theory entitled Film Theory and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1999), and, with Malcolm Turvey, Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts (Routledge, 2001), which is a defense of humanistic understanding in opposition to various forms of theorizing in the arts.

Allen’s subsequent research has focused mostly upon film poetics and aesthetics. He is internationally renowned as a scholar of Alfred Hitchcock. He organized the Hitchcock Centennial Conference in 1999 that co-incided with the publication of Hitchcock: Centennial Essays (BFI, 1999), and he has edited two other anthologies on Hitchcock. In addition to writing 15 scholarly articles on Hitchcock, he is the author of Hitchcock’s Romantic Irony (Columbia University Press, 2007) that examines the relationship between sexuality and style in Hitchcock’s work. From 2001 to 2018, he was editor, with Sid Gottlieb, of The Hitchcock Annual (Columbia University Press).

Allen has also written extensively on Hindi cinema, commonly known as Bollywood. He collaborated with Ira Bhaskar (Jawarharlal Nehru University) on curating a film festival in Abu Dhabi and New York -- Muslim Cultures of Bombay Cinema--and writing an accompanying book Islamicate Cultures of Bombay Cinema (Tulika, 2009). His book with Bhaskar, Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories (Intellect/Orient Blackswan, 2022), was nominated for the Krazna-Krausz book award 2023. He is author of Storytelling in Hindi Cinema: Doubles, Deception, and Discovery (Bloomsbury Press, 2025).

Growing out of writings on film theory, Hitchcock and Indian cinema, Allen’s newest research is an inquiry into the history and philosophy of melodrama. He has published essays on The Passion of Christ and the Melodramatic Imagination, Hitchcock and Melodrama, and the Philosophy of Melodrama. Part of this research is being undertaken in collaboration with Isabelle Frank.

Since joining the School of Creative Media in 2016, Allen has developed research at the intersection of art and new media. He organized two international conferences on Machine Learning and Art, Art Machines (2019) and Art Machines 2 (2021), and, with Jeffrey Shaw, he curated a major exhibition on computational art called Art Machines at the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery, CityU. He published the accompanying book length catalogue, Art Machines (2020), with CityU Press. He has also published a collaborative essay on the new media art and writings of Jeffrey Shaw.

As Director of the Center for the Center of Applied Computing and Interactive Media (ACIM), Allen is collaborating as CityU PI on two projects. The first is Future Cinema Systems led by Jeffrey Shaw (HKBU) in collaboration with Sarah Kenderdine (EPFL), and funded by an ITF grant. Future Cinema Systems is building the next generation fully interactive and immersive 360-degree environment and generating artistic and curatorial applications for this environment.

The second is City in Time II. City in Time is a Hong Kong Cultural Heritage project created by ACIM in collaboration with the Tourism Commission and conceived by Jeffrey Shaw. Allen now directs the project team with Shaw as artistic director. City in Time consists of a mobile app that allows the users to access historical panoramas of Hong Kong at the exact location geographical location where those panoramas where seen, allowing the user to compare past and present. City in Time II has extended this project to 44 sites across the city which now include Lie Yun Mun, Tai Hang, and Kowloon and Kai Tak. It also provides the user various kinds of cultural heritage information and 360 experiences together with access to movie hotspots and a selfie feature.

• Bollywood
• Bombay Cinema
• Film Theory
• Hitchcock
• Melodrama
• Philosophy of Film
• Psychoanalysis
• Wittgenstein