Profile

My research interests cover British cinema, controversies and censorship, archives, film and history. 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). I have particular expertise in 1970s British cinema and film culture and on censorship of film in the UK. As well as work on film and cinema, I also work within audience studies using participatory methods, and collaborate with colleagues across a range of subject areas and disciplines, using film as a mechanism to engage audiences and users.

Publications

My publications include, Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot, (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011), Capital, Culture and Creativity: The British Film Industry in the 1970s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Using Film as a Source (Manchester University Press, 2015).

My fourth monograph will be published with Manchester University Press in April 2025 as Beyond the BBFC: Local and regional film censorship in the UK. This work draws on archival material from fifty regional and local archives from across the UK to explore how censorship of film was implemented at local level. It maps the period from the early days of cinema and the creation of the BBFC in 1913 to the middle of the 1980s when local concerns about video started to overtake those for film. 

I have also published in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Media History, Historical Research, the Journal of British Cinema and Television, and Participations: The Journal of Audience and Reception Studies.   

Memberships

I am a member of the EUscreen Foundation, a European consortium of archives, academics and technical partners which explores aspects of digital heritage, access and preservation, and a member of the Northern Ireland Moving Image Heritage & Archive working group. I am a member of the editorial board of the Journal of British Cinema and Television, and VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture.

Teaching

I currently convene and teach the following modules: 

• Introduction to Film Studies 1 (FLM1001) level 1
• British Cinema: Nation, Identity and Industry (FLM2026) level 2
• Film Cultures and Fandom (FLM3035) level 3
• Censorship, Regulation and Audiences (MA)