Musician, writer, entrepreneur

Mary Lucia Darst

Mary Lucia Darst lives between Kentucky, USA, and Oxford, England. She holds a DPhil (PhD) in Music from the University of Oxford and is a member of St Hilda’s College. For her research on music socio-economics, she won the Laura Bassi Scholarship prize. At Oxford, she was technical officer and then vice-president of the Oxford University Filmmaking Foundation (OUFF), the university’s professional filmmaking arm, directing her own work and producing films for other members of the university. Oxford awarded her the Cameron Macintosh Drama Fund grant to participate in the London Film School's Directors' Workshop with Udayan Prasad. As a filmmaker, Mary Lucia worked for the Moving Picture Institute (MPI) as an intern (research capacity, Smock Media). She also worked as Production Coordinator for MPI’s short film Moving Violation. Since then, she has returned to MPI three separate times as a fellow for their screenwriting, cinematography, and editing workshops. In 2023, she was a Distinguished Fellow with the Richmond International Film Festival and the Richmond Arts Institute.