Turvey was born in North London, where he grew up, and attended the University of Kent.
Career
He taught at Sarah Laurence College in Westchester, NY, before accepting a position at Tufts University in Medford, MA. Turvey began at Tufts in the late 2010s, and has been the Department Head of the Film Department at Tufts. He has written several books, his most acclaimed being Play Time, an analytical work about Jaques Tati.
Personal life
Turvey lives in Massachusetts.
Books
Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, Amsterdam University Press (November 1, 2002) ISBN90-5356-494-2
Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition, Oxford University Press (July 31, 2008) ISBN0-19-532098-0
The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s, MIT Press (March 2011) ISBN0-262-01518-8