Cinema and Television History
DMU’s Cinema and Television History Research Institute (CATHI) is a centre of excellence in archival screen heritage. It specialises in evidence-based methods and oral history approaches to inform groundbreaking interdisciplinary research and RCUK-funded and international collaborations.
CATHI is closely affiliated with the cross-faculty Centre for Adaptations, and directly houses a growing number of unique collections, including the Hammer Script Archive, the Cinema Museum’s Indian Cinemas Archive, the Sir Norman Wisdom Collection, the Peter Whitehead Archive, and (on loan) the archive of British independent distributor Palace Pictures. The vast Andrew Logan Archive donated to DMU’s library special collections by the artist, Alternative Miss World founder and associate of the late British director Derek Jarman presents further opportunities for CATHI-based researchers. CATHI hosts the annual UK Asian Film Festival, the BFI British Silent Film Festival and the postgraduate conference CATHICon, and promotes practice-based documentary research via the DocHub@DMU. In REF2014, CATHI research came top in the UK in its unit of assessment in terms of ‘world-leading’ 4* research outputs: almost half our submission was rated 4* . 100% of our Impact and 90% of our Environment were judged to be ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.
The Cinema and Television History Research Institute at De Montfort University invites applications to the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. Members of the Institute and their research interests are listed below.
Professor Justin Smith – justin.smith@dmu.ac.uk
Professor of Cinema & Television History, Director of CATHI
Post-war British cinema and television, popular and traditional music, cultural identity and popular memory, family history, culture industries, UK film policy and censorship
Dr Monia Acciari – monia.acciari@dmu.ac.uk
Associate Professor, Associate Director of the UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF) Leicester
Transnational and world cinema, film festivals, Bollywood, Indian cinemas, representation of race and ethnicities
Dr Vicky Ball – vicky.ball@dmu.ac.uk
Women’s film and television history, television drama
Professor Steve Chibnall – schib@dmu.ac.uk
Professor of British Cinema, CATHI Director of Archives
British cinema history, 1960s and the counterculture, star studies, film publicity
Dr Pierluigi Ercole – pier.ercole@dmu.ac.uk
Associate Professor
European film history, audiences and reception, Anglo-Italian film culture, silent cinema
Ulrike Kubatta – ulrike.kubatta@dmu.ac.uk
Associate Professor, Director of DocHub@DMU
Documentary filmmaker, practice-based research
Professor Claire Monk – cmonk@dmu.ac.uk
Professor of Film & Film Culture, CATHI Director of the Centre for Adaptations, CATHI contact for the Andrew Logan Archive
British cinema, heritage film, cultural politics and film reception, audiences, fan culture, adaptation, class, gender and sexuality, Merchant Ivory Productions, E. M. Forster across media
Laraine Porter – lporter@dmu.ac.uk
Reader in Cinema History, Director of the British Silent Film Festival
Silent cinema, film exhibition
Dr James Russell – jrussell@dmu.ac.uk
Head of the Leicester Media School
American cinema history, social history of cinema
Dr Ellen Wright – ellen.wright@dmu.ac.uk
Star studies, material culture, representation of gender and sexuality, classical Hollywood and its British reception, photography and film, censorship, taste cultures, cult film, affect, costume.
See more information about CATHI and its research, or go to the Midlands4Cities application page.