Sian Barber

My research interests cover British cinema, film and history and regulation of the moving image. My work explores the relationship between film, culture and society and the means by which we regulate film and cinema. 

I have published on British film and cinema, cinemagoing and audiences, regulation and classification and the work of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). My monographs include Censoring the 1970s: the BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011) and The British Film Industry in the 1970s: Capital, Culture and Creativity (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

I have recently completed a monograph Using Film as a Source which details how film can be used as a source for different types of research.  This work was published in June 2015 by Manchester University Press in conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research. It is the first in a series of pedagogical study guides aimed at undergradte and postgradute students and researchers.

My current research focuses upon local censorship and is drawing on a number of historical case studies to explore the regulation of film within different locations. The first findings of this work are to be published in The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television in 2016.  

Since 2010 I have been a member of the EUscreen project, an EU-funded consortium of academics, technology providers and European broadcasters and archives which has created a fully searchable online database of moving image content. The collection currently houses over 40,000 freely available items. www.euscreen.eu. 

Teaching

I currently convene and teach the following modules: 

• Introduction to Film Studies 1 (FLM1001) level 1
• British Cinema: nation, industry and identity (FLM2026) level 2
• British Cinema: decades and debates (FLM3032) level 3
• Censorship, Regulation and Audiences (MA)