Helen Hughes' research focuses on documentary film and German-language cinema with a special emphasis on representations of the environment. She has published journal articles and chapters on West German cinema, experimental film, Kafka adaptations, GDR and new Austrian documentary cinema, and eco docs. She co-edited Deutschland im Spiegel seiner Filme (2000) and translated Alexander Kluge's Cinema Stories (2007) with Martin Brady. She has published a monograph Green Documentary (2014). Recently she edited a collection of essays with Catalin Brylla entitled Documentary and Disability (2017) and she is currently working on a project on documentary and nuclear power funded by a British Academy small grant.