Speakers

Robert C. Allen

Robert C. Allen is James Logan Godfrey Professor of American Studies, History, and Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1979. He is the co-author with Douglas Gomery of Film History: Theory and Practice (1985) and a number of articles and book chapters on film history.  He is also the author of Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1991), Speaking of Soap Operas (1985), and has edited or co-edited several volumes of essays on television studies.  In 2008, he was one of seven scholars in the U.S. to be awarded a Digital Humanities Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his work on Going to the Show, a digital library project that documents and represents the history of the experience of cinema in North Carolina between 1896 and 1930. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Shanghai, the University of Bergen, and Middlesex University.  He has been awarded fellowships by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Centre, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright programme.

Gerben Bakker

Gerben Bakker is Assistant Professor in Economic History and Management at the London School of Economics. He received his undergraduate degree from Groningen University in the Netherlands, and his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence, for which he was awarded the Herman E. Krooss dissertation prize (2003). He has analyzed the historical development of the European and US film industries, and the evolution of multinationals in the music business. Currently he is investigating the historical relationship between sunk costs, market structure and technological change, studying industries such as news agencies and pharmaceuticals. Bakker has published widely in journals such as Advances in Austrian Economics, Business History, Business History Review, Economic History Review and Enterprise & Society. His book, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940, was recently published by Cambridge University Press in the series Cambridge Studies in Economic History.

Karel Dibbets

Karel Dibbets is Lecturer in Media History at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He is an expert in the history of cinema culture in the Netherlands, and he has a keen interest in the development of digital knowledge infrastructures. He is the architect and editor of the website annex research instrument Cinema Context, which was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Mark Glancy

Mark Glancy is a Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London, where he teaches courses in American and British film history. His publications include When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ Film, 1939-45 (1999), The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide (2003), and, as co-editor, The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches (2007). His next book will be Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain, from the 1920s to the Present.

Julia Hallam

Julia Hallam is Reader in Film and Television Studies in the School of Politics and Communication Studies, University of Liverpool. Her research interests include issues of space, place and identity in moving image texts, film aesthetics, film history and the work of creative women in television. She is the author of several books including Realism and Popular Cinema (2000) and Lynda La Plante (2005). She was principal researcher for the AHRB funded project, City in Film: Liverpool’s Urban Landscape and the Moving Image (2006-08); her current project, Mapping the City in Film: A Geo-Historical Approach, is exploring the history of Merseyside’s amateur cine clubs and using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to map the relationship between film and place. Outcomes from this research are contributing to a permanent exhibition on film and place in the new museum of Liverpool, opening 2010.

Sue Harper

Sue Harper is Professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests include audience response and gender representation. She has published widely on British cinema, and has written a range of articles on subjects as diverse as Gainsborough Studios and weeping in the cinema. Recent articles include: 'A Lower-Middle-Class Taste Community in the 1930s: Admission Figures at the Regent, Portsmouth', The Historical Journal of Film , Radio and Television (2004); 'Beyond Media History: The Challenge of Visual Style' (with Vincent Porter), Journal of British Cinema and Television (2005); and 'Fragmentation and Crisis: 1940's Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2006); Amongst her books are:  Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of the British Costume Film (1994); Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (2000); British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (with Vincent Porter) (2003); and The New Film History (co-edited with J. Chapman and H.M. Glancy) (2007). Sue is Principal Investigator for the major AHRC funded project 1970s British Cinema, Film and Video Art: Mainstream and Counter-Culture. Her forthcoming books are Culture and Society in 1970s Britain: The Lost Decade (co-edited with Laurel Forster), and 1970s British Cinema: The Boundaries of Pleasure (with Justin Smith). Sue is retiring in October 2009 in order to write, unencumbered by meetings and teaching.

Linda Kaye

Linda Kaye is Research Executive at the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC). She worked as a film archivist at the British Film Institute and Tate before managing a major three year digitisation project of newsreel production documents at BUFVC from 2000. She was Senior Researcher on an AHRC resource enhancement project Cinemagazines and the Projection of Britain (2004-2007) and David Lean and Gaumont Sound News (2008). She has extensive experience in the creation of digital outputs - including text, sound and moving image - as an integral part of academic research. Her published output includes: a chapter on moving image in Historical Research Methods for the 21st Century (2009); Projecting Britain: The Guide to British Cinemagazines (2008), co-edited with Emily Crosby; and ‘Reconciling Policy and Propaganda: The British Overseas Television Service 1954-1964’ in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2007).

Justin Smith

Justin Smith is Principal Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth where he is also Co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project 1970s British Cinema, Film and Video Art: Mainstream and Counter-Culture. A cultural historian with a special interest in British cinema, his research interests embrace production, reception and exhibition practices, film fandom, and issues of cultural identity and popular memory.  His publications include: 'Cinema for Sale: The Impact of the Multiplex on Cinema Going in Britain, 1985-2000', Journal of British Cinema and Television (2005); 'Withnail's Coat: Andrea Galer's Cult Costumes', Fashion Theory (2005); and 'The Wicker Man Digest: A Web Ethnography of a Cult Fan Community' in J. Chapman, H.M. Glancy, S. Harper (eds), The New Film History (2007). His book on British cult films, Withnail and Us, is to be published by I. B. Tauris in 2009. 

Andrew Spicer

Andrew Spicer is Reader in Cultural History in the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of the West of England. He has published widely in the cultural history of British cinema, including: Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema (2001/03); Sydney Box for the British Film Makers series from Manchester University Press (2006) and also edited Box’s autobiography, The Lion That Lost Its Way (2005). His chapter ‘The Author as Author: Restoring the Screenwriter to British Film History’ appears in Chapman, Glancy and Harper (eds) The New Film History (2007). His article ‘Film Studies and the Turn to History’ in the Journal of Contemporary History (2004) reviewed recent scholarship in historical film studies. Andrew is currently writing the Historical Dictionary of Film Noir for Scarecrow Press, and working on a critical study of the producer Michael Klinger based on archival material. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of British Cinema and Television and co-edited the recent volume (2009) on screenwriting.

Phil Wickham

Phil Wickham is Curator of The Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture at the University of Exeter. He has written extensively in print and online about British film and television and is the author of The Likely Lads (2008) in the BFI TV Classics series and Understanding Television Texts (2008). He is an experienced researcher in the moving image field, working for many years as a Curator and an Information Officer at the BFI. In the latter role he helped to answer thousands of enquiries about film history and was involved in larger research projects, such as the C4 programme The Ultimate Film, which attempted to compile a list of the most successful films of all time at the UK box office. Currently he also runs Screen Studies South West, a network for all those involved in studying the moving image, or involved in screen heritage, in the West Country.