Research in the Lincoln School of Film, Media and Journalism

Questions of representation, ethics, credibility, and perspective undoubtedly pervade the 21st-century media landscape. From TV streaming practices to global cinemas, from authority to authorship, mass media to convergence, emergence to ecology, the media infiltrate, underpin, and inform every aspect of society. In such a complex and changing climate, it is beyond doubt that our capacity to study, analyse and critique both the media themselves and the industries to which they belong is a fundamental need. Equally, our ability to research and study media and culture ranks among the most essential skills required to understand our world.

Lincoln School of Film, Media and Journalism is home to a community of researchers who explore precisely these questions about culture, consumption, creativity, and communication, consistently pushing at the boundaries of media research. Across film, television, sound studies, digital media, media ecologies, and critical philosophies, our research responds to a broad range of themes relating to culture, society, and media practice. We are united by a passion for collaboration, speculative thinking, and practical research across all disciplines relating to media and culture.

Our Journalism research fosters a range of innovative and problem driven research that addresses contemporary societal issues in a globalised world. The team specialises in interdisciplinary research and research in emerging scholarly fields.

Dr Andrew Elliott, Director of Research

Research Themes

Extrasonic Practice Research Group

Extra Sonic Practice (ESP) are a group of scholars and artists who work with sound in multiple contexts and configurations. Playfully and knowingly (re)appropriating the acronym from its origin (Extra Sensory Perception) – ESP is a response to the growing prevalence of sound within various disciplinary contexts. The ‘extra’ of the group’s title points to sound’s connections to other media, sensory phenomena and theoretical concepts. It also alludes to the difficulty in drawing a clear distinction between the sonic and the vibrational, the heard and the felt, audibility and inaudibility. Take a look at the Extrasonic Practice Research Group for more details.

Film and Screen Studies Cluster

Film and Screen Studies researchers in the School pursue a wide range of enquiries into stardom, national and transnational cinemas, broadcasting and children’s television, issues of exclusion and marginalization and questions of representations of race, gender and sexuality. Although diverse, the projects are imbricated as a broad engagement with who is speaking in what ways to whom, and who are excluded from or relegated to the margins of culture in the system of representation. Enquiries into Italian women stars’ career trajectories in Hollywood and female fandom overlap and inform projects on Hungarian cinematic nation building, exploitation cinema and youth-oriented British TV programming. Audience and star studies, archival research and textual analysis, national and transnational cinema theory are amongst approaches taken and reflect our breadth of supervision interests and openness to collaborative, innovative and transdisciplinary approaches to research. See below for specific supervision interests.

Staff Details

Gábor Gergely’s research interests are focused around questions of belonging and foreignness in popular film in a variety of national cinema settings. He would especially welcome proposals on questions of migration and exclusion and their performance and representation on screen, in particular in, but not limited to the context of Hollywood, Hungary and France; on questions of industry organization and regulation in relation to the marginalization and exclusion of specific real or imagined communities; on questions of Hungarian national identity and/or anti-Semitism in any period of cinema. His current projects focus on the notion of the foreign accent and a sound-oriented approach to questions of foreignness. Gábor’s most recent funded research project is the Anti-Semitism and Hungarian Cinema project, which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust under its Early Career Fellowship scheme (2012-15). 

Recent publications:

Gergely, Gábor (2017) Hungarian film 1929-1947: national identity, anti-Semitism and popular cinema. Amsterdam: AUP.

Gergely, Gábor (2017) The invention of prestige: people on the mountain and the politics of the national. Slavonica.

Gergely, Gábor (2017) "The jungle Is my home": questions of belonging, exile, and the negotiation of foreign spaces in the Tarzan films of Johnny Weissmuller. In: Projecting the world: representing the "foreign" in classical Hollywood. Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media. Detroit: Wayne State UP. pp. 69-87.

Gergely, Gábor (2012) ‘The nature of the exile: discourse and power in The Thief of Bagdad (1940)’. Journal of British Cinema and Television. pp. 159-176.

 

Neil Jackson researches exploitation cinemas and porn cultures. He was co-organiser of the ‘Global Exploitation Cinemas: Historical and Critical Approaches’ conference held at Lincoln in 2015. Neil welcomes enquiries from students wishing to undertake research in these and related areas.

Recent publications:

Jackson, Neil (2016)‘ “Bigger than payphone, smaller than a Cadillac” :porn stardom in Exhausted: J.C.Holmes The Real Story’ In. Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street and Beyond: Global Exploitation  Cinemas. (Bloomsbury)

Jackson, Neil et al (eds) (2015) Snuff: Real Death and Screen Media (Bloomsbury).

 

Antonella Palmieri works on the politics of gender, sexual and ethnic representations in popular film and television. She has published on Italian cinema and star studies and on ‘Italianness’ in Hollywood cinema. She welcomes applications from prospective research students wishing to work in all areas of celebrity and star studies.

Recent publications:

(2016) Sophia Loren and the healing power of female Italian ethnicity in Grumpier Old Men. In: Lasting screen stars: images that fade and personas that endure. Palgrave

(2014) "America is home... America is her oyster!": Dynamics of ethnic assimilation in Alida Valli's American star persona. In: Stars in world cinema: screen icons and star systems across cultures. Tauris World Cinema . I.B.Taurus.

Media Histories and Archive Cluster

The Media Histories and Archives research cluster reflects a diverse group of researchers. The cluster is united by their analysis of and research into the ways in which the media - especially the moving image - reflects the past, as well as the ways in which we as scholars go about understanding the history of those media themselves, and the impact of archival policies on the memory of earlier media. The cluster includes scholars of historical film, television and video games, and researchers of film cultures, Hollywood film, and queer theory in cinema and television. 

Staff Details

Dr Andrew Elliott is the coordinator of this research cluster. He is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, and works on the representation of history in film, TV, and video games, as well as online cultures of historical commemoration. He has published four books on medieval film, games and history, the epic film and medievalism in 21st-century online culture, as well as articles on media depictions of the past and medievalism more generally.

Recent publications:

(2017) Medievalism, politics and mass media: appropriating the Middle Ages in the twenty-first century. Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge.

(2016) Arthurian fragments, Arthurian mosaics. Arthuriana: The journal of Arthurian studies, 25 (4). pp. 14-24.

(2015) The Grail as symbolic quest in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. In: The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest. McFarland, Jefferson, N.C., pp. 187-201

(2014) The return of the epic film: genre, aesthetics and history in the 21st century. Edinburgh University Press.

 

Dr Chris O’Rourke is a historian of media, especially film and television, and popular culture.

Recent publications:

(2017) Acting for the silent screen: film actors and aspiration between the wars. Cinema and Society. I. B. Tauris

(2017) London on film. Screening Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan

(2017) Queer London on film: Victim (1961), The Killing of Sister George (1968) and Nighthawks (1978). In: London on Film. Screening Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan

Practice-based Research Group

The staff of Lincoln School of Film Media includes many media practitioners working in, and across, several fields, including film-makers, sound practice, photography and media arts widely. We invite applications to our Ph.D by practice programme from candidates with first degrees and Master's degrees in any discipline, and we will be happy to work with you from proposal stage through to formal application in order to make sure we can facilitate your research project.

Staff Details

Jane Batkin is an animator with research interests in the history, theory and practice of animation in the context of the cultural and creative industries.

Recent publications:

(2017) Identity in animation:a journey into self, difference, culture and the body. Routledge.

(2016) Rethinking the rabbit: revolution, identity and connection in Looney Tunes. Animation Studies Online Journal, 11.

 

Mikey Murray is a practice-based research specializing in film. He is also an award winning film-maker, writer and director. He is founding Director of the Indie-Lincs Film Festival. His most recent credit is Natalie (2016) - co-funded by BFI via Ffilm Cymru Wales, starring Bafta winning actress, Kate Dickie. He is winner of several awards, including:

Best Sci-Fi Short Film — Philip K. Dick International Sci-Film Film Festival, New York

John Hefin Award - Best Short Film made in Wales — Carmarthen Bay Film Festival, Wales.

Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Short Film — Screentest Film Festival, London.

 

Conohar Scott has completed a practice-based PhD on the subject of the photographer as environmental activist, and he continues to conduct research on the representation of environmental despoliation in photography. As part of his practice, Conohar founded the artist-led collective Environmental Resistance, which raises awareness of industrial pollution and engages in campaigns for environmental remediation. In addition, he publishes papers which examine the history of environmental activism in photography, the aesthetics of industrial pollution, and the function that multi-modality plays in environmental advocacy.

Recent publications:

(2018) The eco-anarchist potential of environmental photography: Richard Misrach's & Kate Orff's Petrochemical America. In: The Routledge companion to photography theory.

(2017) Photographing mining pollution in gold rush California. Photographies, 10 (2). pp. 189-209. 

(2017) Environmental resistance: art for change. Collaborative working practices. In: Photographers and research: the role of research in contemporary photographic practice. Focal Press, UK.

The co_Lab Research Group 

co_LAB is the Collaboration Laboratory Research Network, which was initiated by staff from the Lincoln School of Film and Media. co_LAB is designed to explore and develop new approaches to collaborative teaching and learning through the use of networked digital tools, and through the transferral of knowledge, skillsets and teaching styles. Our projects involve working with mixed disciplinary groups of students, utilising discovery-based learning methods to explore issues pertinent to digital culture. The aim is to develop interdisciplinary and collaborative methods for innovation and social entrepreneurship, resulting in a variety of institutional and community focused projects.

In addition to undertaking a variety of practice-based research projects across the University and local community, co_LAB has developed a substantial European network of partner universities, departments and practitioners. This network has resulted in collaboration on externally-funded projects and international strategic alliances to enable the sharing of pedagogical practice, and to enhance student mobility. 

Current and Recent Research Students

Current PhD Students

John Sandy-Hindmarch

Andrew West

Lynsey Coombs (registered in the School of History and Heritage)

Anthonia Ziregbe

Barnaby Falck

Grant Bridges

Paul Sinclair

Zara Healy

Diane Charlesworth

 

Recently Completed PhD Students

Alberto Micali (Awarded 2016)

Wang Chi (Awarded 2017)

Tom Philip Edwards (Awarded 2018)

Rachel Barraclough (Awarded 2018)

Niall Flynn (Awarded 2019).

 

Current MA by Research Students

Emma Moorhouse

Ben Simmons

Michelle Meade

 

Completed MA by Research Students

Tom Martin

Rose Braisby

David Ayres

Luke Compton

Tom Durrans

Sophie Hillman

Funded Research Projects

Lincoln School of Film and Media is home to a range of vibrant research projects. Current funded research includes:

- Televisual Caricature: An Evaluation of satirical impersonation focusing on transnational, transmedia and industrial contexts, PI Hannah Andrews, funded by British Academy, 2022-24.

Invisible Worlds: Place-Making, Augmented Reality, and Alderley Edge, Co-I Andrew Elliott, funded by AHRC Project Grant, 2020-23.

Pause for Thought: Media Literacy in an Age of Incessant Change, PI: Tom Sutherland, funded by AHRC Research Network Grant, 2020-22.

Past projects have included major AHRC project grants to study Televising History, Comics and the World Wars, Arts Council England Funding to explore Youth Engagement in Politics and Sincil Bank redevelopment projects (working with Lincoln BIG and City of Lincoln Council, and ESRC funding to explore Online Information about Drug Use.

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