UEA has one of the longest-established film and television studies programmes in the UK, and enjoys an international reputation in the field, especially for its research on British and American cinema history, on gender and representation, and on film and television genres; for its MA courses (including the unique MA in Film and Television Archiving); and for its large and successful PhD programme. Recent external assessments by the Higher Education Funding Council have been extremely positive, with a 5* rating in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. The RAE Panel Feedback Report for 2001 further noted that “the department has made a serious and important contribution to film studies in the UK.”
We have a strong and vibrant research culture. Several conferences and research symposia have been held at UEA in recent years, including Interrogating Post-Feminism: The Politics of Gender and Popular Culture – a major international conference which took place in April 2004 (http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/postfeminism/). Our PhD students have also organised a number of postgraduate conferences, such as the very successful 2006 event, Gender and National Identity in Film and Television. The School runs a weekly Film and Television Studies Research Seminar during term-time (which also attracts our MA and PhD students and staff from other Schools). Speakers in recent years have included Ginette Vincendeau, Laura Mulvey, David Trotter, Su Holmes, Peter Stanfield, Mick Eaton, David Pirie, Neil Brand, James Chapman, Linda Ruth Williams, Robert C Allen, Martin Barker, Christine Geraghty, Steve Neale, Keith Negus, Laura Marcus, John Street, Steve Chibnall, Duncan Petrie, Bruce Babington, Lee Grieveson and Mette Hjort.
We are proud of the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), which forms an integral part of the School. We are currently in receipt of a £417,000 resource enhancement grant from the AHRC, for ‘Anglia Television at the East Anglian Film Archive’, a project that will provide superior access to our extensive collection of television programmes dating back to the launch of Anglia in 1959. The School is also home to the British Cinema History Research Project, which benefited for the first three years of its existence from a grant of £317,000 from the AHRC. The two key strands of the project are the production of a fully searchable index to the long-running British film and TV trade paper, Kine Weekly, and the production of transcripts of the oral history archive produced by the film and TV trade union BECTU. Both resources are housed on a dedicated website.
The School has a vibrant PhD programme, and an equally large and dynamic taught MA programme. Indeed, the Panel Feedback Report from the 2001 RAE made special note of these features: “the department’s strong doctoral programme, … its notable success in obtaining [externally funded] studentships…, the high rates of … completion, and the effectiveness of its research training context. This was considered one of the department’s particular strengths.” Former research students now hold lectureships at Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Bath Spa, Birkbeck College, London, Central Lancashire, DeMontfort, Exeter, Griffith (Australia), Kent, Leicester, Manchester Metropolitan, Middlesex, Monash (Australia), Northumbria at Newcastle, Queen Mary, London, Portsmouth, Roehampton, Sheffield Hallam, Southampton, Staffordshire, Stockholm, Sussex, UEA, and Warwick Universities, among others.
The Library has acquired key holdings in support of staff research, including extensive runs of Variety and Kine Weekly, as well as What’s On in London and the NFT programme booklets. In addition, three personal collections have been donated to the School, those of TV critic Philip Purser, film historian David Shipman, and cinematographer Gerald Gibbs.
