A creative, multi-disciplinary environment for world-leading research
This vibrant research area brings together the expertise of academics in the following subject areas:
- Film and television, media, digital arts
- Dpartment of Film and Media
- Department of Art and Music
- Department of Social Research
- Music and performing arts
- Art, design and fashion
- Digital art, animation, games and VFX
- Media production and technology
We returned 18 of our colleagues to REF21 Unit of Assessment 34: Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management. The research area also includes 34 PGR students.
Research topics
The multidisciplinearity of the area is demonstrated in a snapshot of research topics returned to REF:
- Music festivals
- Sex on screen
- Cyborg realities
- Film and trauma
- Global cultural economies
- Privacy and digital culture
- Film culture and filmmaking
- Museums and the Atomic Age
- Modernist art and World War I
- Documentary and digital ethics
- Contemporary television drama
- Photographic works of landscapes
- Constructivist and Futurist fashions
- Contemporary art and ‘Chineseness’
- The War on Terror and American film
- Screen acting, stardom and performance
- Cultural fandom and subcultures in the digital age
- Music history and culture
- Live music industries
- Music business
Are you a Solent member of staff or postgraduate research student working in this area? Join the Collaborative Team for Media, Culture and the Arts Researchers here to share your research, expand your network, and hear about publication, event and funding opportunities.
Path-breaking publications
REF 2021 impact case studies
Screening Sex project: A better understanding of the representation of sex and sexual cultures
Agatha Christie: Widening knowledge and understanding of the world's best-selling novelist
University research lead
Our Media, Culture and the Arts research area is led by Dr Donna Peberdy, Associate Professor of Performance, Sex and Gender, who is the doctoral coordinator for this area. Based in the Southampton Film and Television School, Donna is course leader for MA Film Production. Donna’s research focuses on screen acting and performance, gender, sexuality and the politics of identity. She is the author of Masculinity and Film Performance: Male Angst in Contemporary American Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), which was awarded CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2012. She is co-editor of Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversion (I. B. Tauris 2017) and series co-editor of the Screening Sex book series for Edinburgh University Press. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals Transnational Cinemas, Celebrity Studies, The New Review of Film and Television, Men & Masculinities and numerous edited collections. She is co-director of www.screeningsex.com and co-convenes the Screening Sex scholarly interest group for the British Association for Film, Television and Screen Studies. Donna was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship in 2020 in recognition of her approach to research-informed teaching.
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