Contemporary Screen Studies and Practices at Ulster University is a new and vibrant area of research that combines theory and practice of moving image arts in the new digital media age. Applicants can propose cinema/screen studies or practice-based research topics and/or related research questions that unearth and celebrate diversity in new filmmaking voices, such as cinemas by Global South, women, LGBT+, neurodiverse, indigenous and people of colour.
The Contemporary Screen Studies/Practices PhD at Ulster University recognises long-held racial, gender-based and colonialist hegemonic and white-dominated prejudices in the study of neglected cinemas of diversity and encourages all interested applications to submit proposals to address the lack of scholarship in these areas: cinemas of the Global South, indigenous, black and MENA cinemas, i.e. study proposals beyond the dominant Western ‘global’ Hollywood and European economies of production, distribution and exhibition. Methodologies informed by post-colonial, critical race, Indigenous, feminist, and/or queer thought and the theory/history of moving image media and culture in the context of the Global South are particularly welcome.
Proposals are welcomed in a wide range of areas relating to staff research interests (including practice-as-research). With a combined experience of over fifty years in filmmaking, television production, animation and the creative industries, our experienced team of internationally established, research-active staff are able to offer supervision across a wide range of subjects and themes, from film history and national cinemas to contemporary filmcraft and emerging virtual reality technologies.
Where research proposals span various disciplines, a supervisory team can be assembled across schools and faculties to meet the needs of the projects. Our Contemporary Screen Studies/Practices PhD provides you with an opportunity to study a range of specialist topics within the areas of onscreen representation, themes and narratives; creative leadership in diverse film policy and analysis; study of the evolution of the screen industries and opportunities; and audience development in the age of streaming media.
Proposals are sought relating to the following areas of staff expertise: production studies/film industry studies; media platform studies/streaming media/emerging and immersive media; queer cinema/gender studies and film; transnational and global cinema/screens/cinemas of the Global South, film and digital humanities; avant-garde cinema/experimental film/expanded cinema; film festival studies; and political oppositional cinema and TV. Applicants are invited to make contact with potential supervisors in advance of application to discuss the feasibility of their chosen topic.
Our experienced team of internationally established, research-active staff have the critical theoretical experience required to lead the supervision of a research degree in Contemporary Cinema/Screen. Recent publications include: Boody Women: Women Directors of Horror (2022) and Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism, and Resistance (2018). Research active staff also have significant professional backgrounds within the creative industries. They have held positions at Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television; BBC; Disney; International Cinematographers Guild; HBO; ITV; MTV, NI Screen; RTÉ; and the Irish Film Board. Recent film practice-as-research outputs include Frictionless: A Virtual Reality Documentary (2020) and The Gift (2018, Best International Short Film at Dublin Silk Road International Film Festival).
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