An Invigorating Shake?

A paper on the UK debate about AVPhDs delivered at the DIEGETIC LIFE FORMS AND DIEGETIC LOGIC: ASSESSING IMAGE-BASED SCHOLARSHIP CONFERENCE - 6 July 2009 at VCA, Melbourne

I am a currently the Course Convenor for MA Screen Documentary at Goldsmiths, University of London – so I teach aspiring documentary makers as well as co-supervising PhD students working on projects that involve media practice. For much of my working life I worked as a documentary filmmaker, first in community and political video activism, then as a producer (predominantly for Channel 4). I have taught at MA level for the last 20 years. From 2003-2006 I have had an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts, which included the production of an experimental video-diary film, A Whited Sepulchre. I am a founding member, also serving on the Steering Group of AVPhD1, an AHRC funded training and support network for all those doing, supervising and examining audio-visual practice based doctorates. Starting in September 2005, AVPhD has mounted more than a dozen events across the UK and Ireland; the practice research projects covered, include (but are not restricted to) documentary, fiction, narrative/non-narrative film, non-linear and new media.

So I am making a slow journey from being a media practitioner, to being an academic – and probably will always be stuck, somewhere in the middle. Most of what I am saying here comes through the lens of that history, and from my own experience of supervision as well as currently doing my own (AV) PhD, based on my fellowship film, A Whited Sepulchre.