B-Film - University of Birmingham

B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies is an interdisciplinary and international research centre at the University of Birmingham that is wholly inclusive of all scholars working in film-related areas of research.

B-Film is co-directed by Professor Rob Stone and Dr Andrew Watts, has an inter-departmental management group and benefits from an international advisory body. B-Film is defined by its research expertise, externally-funded research projects and contributions to film culture on an academic, public, local and global scale. Membership and expertise is drawn primarily from the departments of Film and Creative Writing and Modern Languages but is also wholly inclusive and welcomes scholars and postgraduates from all academic areas. B-Film is committed to placing film-related research activity at the University of Birmingham within the context of European, North American and World territories through interdepartmental and inter-institutional strategic collaborations that enhance the University’s global reputation.

B-Film provides a solid basis and excellent collaborative initiatives for building networks and groupings that enable researchers to work with regional and national higher education institutions, local and national organisations and policy-makers, as well as academic, cultural, popular and industrial partners worldwide.

B-Film is ideally placed to respond to the changing funding strategies of various research bodies and several major research projects and externally-funded projects are currently thriving at Birmingham. It provides a first-stop source for information on the research supervision available at the University of Birmingham and a showcase for the high-profile range of publications produced by its members.

Members

Professor Rob Stone, Co-Director
Dr Andrew Watts, Co-Director

Academic staff

Professor Lisa Downing , Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality
Dr Elystan Griffiths , Reader in Modern Languages
Professor Louise Hardwick , Professor of Francophone Studies and World Literature
Professor Kate Ince , Professor of French and Visual Studies
Professor Russell Jackson , Emeritus Professor of Drama
Dr Richard Langley , Associate Professor in Film
Dr Natalia (Natasha) Rulyova , Associate Professor in Russian
Professor Diana Spencer , Dean of Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences
Professor James Walters , Professor of Screen Aesthetics and Criticism

Doctoral researchers

B-Film offers a dynamic research environment for postgraduates, with many opportunities to benefit from the college-wide research expertise of academics and to participate in the research events that B-Film holds on campus and throughout the city of Birmingham in such venues as The Electric Cinema, the Midlands Arts Centre and the Mockingbird Theatre. Research students on the MA by research, PhD or Audio-Visual PhD are automatically members of B-Film and encouraged and enabled to run events such as workshops and screenings related to their own research.

B-Film has a vibrant postgraduate community, carrying out research in a broad range of areas. Profiles of some of our current doctoral researchers and details of their research are listed below:

Research outputs

B-Film is committed to developing high profile, collaborative research projects with external partners.

We recently completed a two-year AHRC project on Screening European Heritage with the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds. To find out more, download the final summary report (PDF - 92KB).

We also teamed up with the University of Brighton and mac birmingham to stage the Cine-Excess conference and film festival 'Cine-Excess VII: European Erotic Cinema: Identity, Desire and Disgust'. To find out more, download the final summary report (PDF - 376KB).

Many other research activities are under development at B-Film. To find out more about all the centre’s activities during its first year, download the interim report (PDF - 156KB).

In addition to collaborative projects, B-Film members have been actively publishing on a wide-range of subjects. Below is a selection of books on film, television and the moving image authored or edited by members of B-Film. For a full list of publications, including journal articles and book chapters, please see the individual staff profiles in the members section.

Cover of Film and Ethics by Lisa Downing Cover of Patrice Leconte by Lisa Downing

Cover of From Perversion to Purity edited by Lisa Downing

Marlow Mann, Archival Film Festivals

Rob Stone, Walk, Don’t Run: The Cinema of Richard Linklater

BASQUE-CINEMA

book cover

Contact B-Film

For an informal chat about research degrees in Film studies at the University of Birmingham, to get further information or to enquire about applying, please contact:

Professor Rob Stone: r.stone@bham.ac.uk

Dr Andrew Watts: a.j.watts.2@bham.ac.uk

B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies
College of Arts and Law
The University of Birmingham
B15 2TT, UK