John Grierson and Practice-based Film Propaganda Research

Scottish film pioneer John Grierson (1898-1972) had a profound impact on the development of documentary film in Scotland and throughout Britain and North America. His writings on film and its advocacy applications have proved influential and provocative. This project invites the doctoral candidate to reconsider Grierson’s writings and evolved thinking of film methodologies. The research will include making a series of documentary film propaganda experiments, the topic of which is open. The thesis will be supervised by Professor Alan Marcus (Chair in Film and Visual Culture) and 2nd or co-supervised by Professor Cairns Craig (Glucksman Chair of Irish and Scottish Studies). This joint initiative is being offered by the University of Aberdeen’s Film and Visual Culture programme (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/film/) in collaboration with the internationally renowned Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/). The successful applicants will be able to benefit from the research cultures of both units and our state-of-the-art Media Lab’s video production and post-production facilities.

The School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture has a lively postgraduate community. Postgraduate students are offered a comprehensive programme of research skills training.