Migration, Podcasts and Jamie Oliver: Upcoming Portsmouth University Talks

Over the next few weeks, the University of Portsmouth’s School of Media and Performing Arts is hosting a series of intriguing talks that are free and open to the public. Deborah Shaw, SMPA’s Reader in Film Studies, elaborates.

Universities are funny places. They are often in the middle of cities, as is the case with the University of Portsmouth. They have all these academics who spend years of their lives trying to understand issues they are passionate about. They deliver talks on these subjects in research seminars and invite their colleagues from all over the country, and sometimes the world, to talk about a subject that they are often the foremost authority on. The department adds good quality refreshments for the audience and six people attend or maybe a few more if we are lucky.

Why am I telling you this? Well, your local university will be hosting many such events and you are all invited – ‘you’ being anyone who is genuinely interested in the topic. (We at universities need to do more to let you know about these events, but they are usually somewhere to be found on the university’s website).

All of this is really an excuse to let you know about the spring term research seminars regularly organised by my school in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries. They’re hosted by three research groups: Culture and Conflict; Screen Practice Research and Innovation; and Media, Culture and Communication. The organising committee are Lincoln Geraghty, Stephen Harper, Laurel Forster, Deborah Shaw and Yael Friedman.

4pm on 25th April, Eldon Building 1.09. The Mexican/Dutch Filmmaker Dr Itandehui Jansen of Edinburgh University will be screening a selection of her award-winning films that deal with migration and indigenous identity, including The Last Council, Alma & Esperanza and In Times of Rain. She will then discuss them in relation to research.

3pm on 9th May, Eldon Building 1.10. Dr Joanne Hollows, a freelance writer and researcher specialising in food cultures, domestic cultures, feminism and popular culture will deliver a paper entitled ‘”How Dare They!”: Jamie Oliver and the contradictions of European belonging and EU membership.’

2pm on 21st May, Eldon Building 1.10. Professor Catherine Grant of Birkbeck University will discuss filmmaking as academic research, the audio-visual essay form and the journal she edits, (in)Transition, as a platform for practice research outputs.

3pm on 29th May, Eldon Building 1.10. Dr Dario Llinares, Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Screen Media, University of Brighton, will present on the topic ‘Reconceiving the Symbiosis of the Audio and the Visual through Podcasting Praxis’.

We really hope you can be there!