Professor Ian Conrich

Faculty: Arts, Design and Technology

School: School of Humanities

Subject Area: Film and Television

Ian has supervised three theses to completion and examined a further 5 PhDs. He has also supervised numerous MA theses. He welcomes enquiries from new PhD students.

Teaching responsibilities

Module leader for 'Horror Nation' and 'Television and Tourism'.
Contributing lecturer for 'Contemporary American Cinema' and 'The Moving Image'.

Professional interests

Since 1997, Ian has organised eighteen conferences, including large international gatherings in Germany, Poland, Italy and France, and in collaboration with institutions such as University Paris Dauphine, University of Gdansk, Goethe University, Frankfurt, the University of Vienna, and Victoria University of Wellington. Many of these conferences have involved working closely with foreign governments and embassies.

In addition to the conferences that Ian has organised, he has worked with national and regional museums in the UK, Norway and on Easter Island, curating exhibitions with strong outreach and educational objectives aimed at the general public and schools. Ian has also worked with five international film festivals as a curator, consultant, and jury member. These include the London Film Festival, Hawai'i International Film Festival, the St Tropez Film Festival, and the Era New Horizons Film Festival, in Wroclaw, Poland.

Ian has worked extensively with the British, New Zealand, Australian and Chilean governments. Working predominantly with foreign affairs, and culture and heritage ministries, he has given senior briefings, been a consultant, events organiser and after-dinner speaker. This has included, in more than a fifteen-year period, the Ambassadors, High Commissioners, Deputy High Commissioners, and Consulates at the New Zealand and Australian High Commissions in the UK, the British High Commission in New Zealand, the Chilean Embassy in the UK, the Australian Embassy in Austria, and the New Zealand Embassies in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Poland, Turkey and the Netherlands.

As a guest lecturer, programmer, consultant, and curator for study schools, film festivals, themed weekends, workshops, and adult education, Ian has collaborated with regional cinemas across the UK, including Harbour Lights Cinema, Southampton, the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham, Phoenix Arts Centre, Leicester, the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, Clocktower Arts and Media Centre, Croydon, Cinema City, Norwich, Watermans Arts Centre, London, and The Dukes cinema, Lancaster.

Research interests

Asia-Pacific film (primarily New Zealand, Polynesia, Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh), visual, material, and popular culture of the Pacific Islands (with a focus on Easter Island and New Zealand), marginalised cinemas, migration and diaspora, transnationalism and multiculturalism, indigenous cinema and digital film practices, film in relation to post-settler societies and film regions of the commonwealth (especially Maori, Samoan, and Inuit film), pre-cinema (early photography, magic lantern slides and stereoviews), film genres (the musical, comedy, horror, and the fairy tale), consumption and merchandising, film and masculinity, dystopian and utopian film, film and philosophy, British cinema, especially film censorship, genres, and 1930s cinema, post-classical Hollywood cinema, and American cinema before and after the conversion to sound.

Membership of professional bodies and advisory committees

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Member of the Peer Review College for the AHRC. Refereed submissions for Cambridge University Press, the British Film Institute, SUNY, Blackwell's, Routledge, Manchester University Press, Edinburgh University Press, and the journals Cinema Journal, Theory, Culture and Society, Body and Society, Post Script, Horror Studies, The Contemporary Pacific, Social Semiotics, Film and Philosophy, Gothic Studies, Studies in Australasian Cinema, and New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film.

Recent Conferences

Keynote and Guest Speaker

• 6-9/11/12 - 'Beyond Conflict in Sri Lankan Cinema', for Mediating Peace: Reconciliation through Art, Music and Film, 4th International Conference on Peace and Reconciliation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (Guest speaker)
• 28/10/11 - 'An Infected Population: Zombie Culture and the Modern Monstrous', keynote address to the Zombosium at the University of Winchester.
• 10-11/2/11 - 'Cross-Cultural relationships in Asia-New Zealand Films', presented at the Asian Exposure: East Asian Cinema in a Global Context conference, Coventry University. (keynote speaker)

As speaker

• 6-8/7/12 - 'City Limits: New Zealand's Gothic Revivalism and the Borrowed Style of the Horror Film Perfect Creature (2006)' for New Zealand and Europe: Borders, Nations, Identities conference, University of Gdansk, Poland
• 8-11/2/12 - 'Difficult to Stomach: Food and the Horror Film', paper presented at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association 33rd annual conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Media experience

Ian has been a consultant and freelance writer for the BBC and Film4. He has been interviewed for television, radio, and the press in the UK, Ireland, France, USA, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, and Poland. As a guest, he has appeared on national radio in the UK on Open Book, for BBC Radio 4, and on French national television for France24; as an interviewee on Nine to Noon and Sunday Morning for Radio New Zealand, and in Australia on ABC Radio Tasmania. Ian has also appeared as a special guest on Telewizja Poland, and in the UK on Channel 4 for 50 Films to See Before You Die. He has written for Onfilm and the Times Higher, and he has been interviewed for Time magazine, with his work also discussed in newspapers such as the Independent, and the Sunday Times.

• 25/10/11 Live interview on zombie culture for Newstalk, National radio, Ireland.
• 25/10/11 Pre-recorded interview on zombie culture, for BBC World Today.
• 9/9/11 Live interview on the cultural and social significance of rugby in New Zealand, for France24 national television.
• 22/8/10 Pre-recorded guest interview, alongside Fay Weldon, discussing Maori myths and her new book, Kehua!, for Open Book, BBC Radio 4.
• 7/08 Variety of Eastern European television and mainstream newspaper interviews in support of the large retrospective of New Zealand film held in Wroclaw, Poland.
• 10/2/08 Pre-recorded interview with Chris Laidlaw on New Zealand Studies for Radio New Zealand.
• 14/1/08 Pre-recorded interview on New Zealand magic lantern slides for Radio New Zealand.
• 10/07 Consultant for a Channel 4 Time Team special on iron-age hill forts and the Maori pa.
• 18/12/06 Live interview on New Zealand Studies for Nine to Noon on Radio New Zealand.
• 14/8/06 Interviewee for the Channel 4 television programme, 50 Films to See Before You Die.
• 5/8/05 Live interview on the merchandising of The Lord of the Rings for ABC Radio Tasmania.
• 2000 Consultant to Film4 on film classification and censorship.
• 1999 Contracted by the BBC to write a series of articles for BBC online on film classification and censorship.

Undergraduate qualifications

• BA (Hons) First Class in Film and Philosophy, University of Kent

Postgraduate qualifications

• MA in Film Studies, University of East Anglia
• Diploma in TEFL, English Language Centre

Research qualifications

• PhD in Film Studies, University of Surrey

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