Derek Johnston

BA Media and Broadcast Production

Broadcast Analysis I

Popular Genres

Media and Time 

MA in Media and Broadcast Production

Research Methods

Dissertations

Contributing to:

History and Its Audiences (MA Public History)

My research focuses on the history of genres within their industrial, social and cultural contexts, particularly concentrating on fantastic genres such as science fiction and horror as represented on television. My doctoral thesis examined the origins of British television science fiction, covering all of the productions broadcast between 1936 and the arrival of commercial television in 1955. I moved on to exploring the links between genres and seasonality, and between television and the seasons, leading to my monograph on seasonal horror for Palgrave entitled Haunted Seasons: Television Ghost Stories for Christmas and Horror for Halloween, a special issue of the Journal of Popular Television on television seasonality, and a dossier for the same journal specifically on Christmas television. I have edited a collection on Nigel Kneale and Horror (2025), examining aspects of the work of one of the key figures in forming British television drama. Currently I am working on an edited collection on Folk Horror on Television, with Dr Diane Rodgers of Sheffield Hallam University.

I am also interested in the broad field of investigating popular culture and its expressions, and how these relate to cultural change. I am particularly interested in ideas of identity, nostalgia, history, and the usefulness of genres which put some distance between the everyday and the narrative, such as science fiction, horror, and historical dramas. I am developing research considering the different modes of historical drama, with an initial focus on the Gothic mode.

Television; Radio; Film; Genre; Science fiction; Horror; Telefantasy; Historical drama; Nostalgia; Identity

Memberships

Centre for Public History, Queen's University Belfast - https://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforPublicHistory/

British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) - https://www.baftss.org/

Founder Member of the BAFTSS Horror Studies Special Interest Group - https://www.baftss.org/copy-of-horror-studies

International Gothic Association

International Association for Media and History

Society of Authors

Research Opportunities

Gothic / horror, science fiction, fantasy in and across media.

Representations of history in media.

History of media, particularly in the UK.

Previous Doctoral Supervisions

Dr Portia Ellis-Woods, ‘BBC Northern Ireland Drama and Features Programming 1924-1956: Development, Identity, and Cultural History’, 2014-2018

Dr Aislinn Clarke, 'Crouching at the door: The Devil's Doorway and firsts in Northern Irish and female horror filmmaking', 2022-23 (PhD by prior publication, second supervisor)