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World-leading research

The Film, Theatre & Television Research Division carries out cutting-edge interdisciplinary research in state-of-the-art facilities.

We have a vibrant and world-class research environment: in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, 80% of our research was in the highest categories of Internationally Excellent and World Leading. Our research combines publications in leading journals and publishing houses with practice-based research and the provision of publicly available online resources.

Our expertise

Our research analyses the forms and conventions of film, theatre and television, their cultural and historical contexts (mainly 20th and 21st century), and the politics of representation. Close analysis is a hallmark of much of our research, and we were pioneers of practice-based research: the first Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Practice-as-Research Ph.D. grant was awarded to the Department of Film, Theatre and Television. Read more about Practice as Research.

Research Leadership

Our staff provide substantial research leadership: including leadership of the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (headed by Professor Lucia Nagib), and the Beckett International Foundation (co-directed by Professor Anna McMullan), both based at the University of Reading.

We provide leadership to our disciplines through our editorial positions in leading journals (such as the film journal Screen, Critical Studies in Television, Transnational Cinemas and The Journal of Beckett Studies) and book series (IB Tauris 'World Cinema', Manchester University Press 'Television Series', Anthem Press 'Film Drama and Performance Studies').

News

27th January 2016:
International Conference – Liberation Struggles, the Falling of the Empire and the Birth (through images) of African Nations

20th January 2016:
Actors for Human Rights are performing their documentary play Asylum Dialogues in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television

3rd December 2015:
Dr Tiago de Luca (University of Liverpool) – Slow Time, Visible Cinema: Duration, Experience, and Spectatorship

Selected publications

Edited by Jonathan Bignell and Stephen Lacey. (2014) British television drama: past, present and future. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 9781137327581.0001

Edited by: Lucia Nagib, Anne Jerslev. (2013) Impure cinema: intermedial and intercultural approaches to film. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd. ISBN: 9781780765112

Purse, L. (2013) Digital imaging in popular cinema. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp208. ISBN: 9780748646906

John Gibbs. (2013) The life of mise-en-scène: visual style and British film criticism. Manchester University Press. ISBN: 9780719088667

Anna McMullan. (2012) Performing embodiment in Samuel Beckett's drama. Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-4156-34205

Edited by Teresa Murjas. (2012) Invisible country: four Polish plays. Intellect Ltd. ISBN: 9781841504148

Impact

All of our funded research projects involve activities that are geared to benefiting the wider public and/or the cultural sector.

We have an excellent record of major, externally funded research projects across all of the disciplines in the Division. These include projects on Intermedial Cinema, Staging Beckett's plays in the UK and Ireland, the Spaces of British television drama, and the Development of Theatre and Performance by the Arts Council of Great Britain.

We have well-established links with cultural institutions such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Modern, the British Film Institute, the Cinemateca Brasileira (Brazil), AusStage (Australia) and IbsenStage (Norway).

Get the latest news about our research via:

Facebook – Film, Theatre and Television

Facebook – Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures

YouTube

Blog – Screens and Stages

Blog – Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures

Blog – Staging Beckett

Projects

Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema: Exploring Intermediality as a Historiographic Method

This project, which is funded by the AHRC in collaboration with the Brazilian funding agency FAPESP, will raise awareness of the diversity of Brazilian cinema and of the possibilities of intermedial cinema through a Tropicália Film Season at Tate Modern; re-stagings of the Movie Prologues at the Cinemateca Brasileira and the Reading Film Theatre; and a Brazilian Music Film Season at the Reading Film Theatre.

Find out more about Intermídia

Memory, Materiality and the Archive

Dr Murjas directed an Arts Council-funded exhibition on Huntley & Palmers’ ration biscuits decorated by soldiers in the trenches during World War I. The First World War in Biscuits was exhibited at Reading Museum and at the Colchester Minories.

Find out more about Memory, Materiality and the Archive

'Disappearing War': Cinema and the politics of erasure in the war on terror Funded by: British Academy

This British Academy-funded project examines what experiences, people and places are routinely erased from cinematic and visual media representations of the war on terror, and the military campaigns fought in its name. The project brings together an interdisciplinary and international group of film and politics scholars with film practitioners in a workshop, an edited collection of essays, and a public event, to explore how we know contemporary war through film and the media.

Giving Voice to the Nation. The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1995

Public subsidy is the cornerstone of post-war British theatre: new writing; new theatre spaces; new theatrical styles and genres; the birth of the fringe and the encouragement of ethnic minority involvement all owe their continuing existence to the policies and financial backing of Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB). Its impact on theatre policy and practice is often alluded to but has never been fully explored, either in those books that deal with the history of the ACGB, or those that focus on the history and historiography of post-war British theatre. The project comprises of three major strands: histories of regional theatre, touring companies and new writing. The project outputs and an accessible archive will ensure that the benefits of the project will be both long-term and widespread across the academic theatre community and practitioners, and across the research communities of history and cultural studies.

Find out more about Giving Voice to the Nation

Staging Beckett

The AHRC funded Staging Beckett project has compiled a searchable database of productions of Samuel Beckett's plays in the UK and Ireland, with various online resources including interviews and forthcoming productions.

Find out more about Staging Beckett

Read about other recent projects

Contact us

For specific enquiries, please contact:

Professor Jonathan Bignell

Research Division Lead

Email: j.bignell@reading.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0) 118 378 4073

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Study opportunities

Postgraduate community

We have a strong, vibrant postgraduate community across all of our disciplines: our postgraduate students organise the annual Journeys Across Media conference, established in 2003.

State-of-the-art-facilities

We are housed in the Minghella Studios which include performance spaces, a digital cinema, multi-camera television studio, sound stage and editing suites, and which support staff and postgraduate research practice in multi-media performance and digital media.

Find out more about postgraduate opportunities relating to our research division: