Media and Communication at Swansea University is a growing and ambitious department, developing high quality original research and committed to delivering teaching excellence. It encompasses diverse social scientific and humanistic approaches to media, film, journalism and communication studies combined with interdisciplinary graduate teaching to an international body of students through the delivery of a range of specialist programmes at both MA and PhD level.  Department staff sustain active research links with departments across Swansea University and with academics internationally.

There are two main research groupings in the department.

1. European Film and Identity

European Film and Identity brings together substantial expertise in the history, theory and reception of European cinema and is engaged in a variety of provocative analyses of films, film-makers, movements and film-watching communities and nations in relation to literature, new media, politics and socio-political and geo-political contexts. Researchers are closely associated with the European Cinema Research Forum and the Studies in European Cinema journal from Intellect. This group features specific research strengths in German, Polish, Eastern European, Basque, Hispanic and Welsh cinema.

2. Digital Media and Technology

Digital Media and Technology combines research at the nexus between media history, theory and technological change, addressing key issues in the emerging global digital world. The group seeks to develop a critical understanding of networked digital media and online social practices and their social, economic and political dynamics in order to inform academic research, wider policy issues and public debates. The relationships between media technology, cultural form and the shift from 'atoms to bits' are addressed through a range of innovative methodological approaches together with a focus on placing these developments within a historical and social context. 

• Media History: including visual media and visual culture; print and broadcast media; science fiction and technology; music and popular culture; journalism; the deep history of media; media archeology.
  

• Theory:  including postmodern theory; theories of the information society, network society, post-fordism; global communication; media and the public sphere; political theory and the media; Jean Baudrillard; moral panics and the media; medium theory; social and political aspects of media; methodologies for researching media.

• Technology: including new media; digital media; philosophy of technology; intellectual property rights (IPRs); theories of technology; history of technology; software studies; auditory technology and sound; digital democracy; social networking; computer code and software studies; remediation.

These are complemented by research clusters around the subjects of:

Media and Identity in Small Nations, with particular reference to Wales
Research into Welsh media studies has focussed on the output, policy and history of the press, cinema, television and new media in both languages of the country, as well as developing comparative research on Basque media.

Journalism Theory, Practice and Criticism
Research associated with the Erasmus-Mundus scheme centres upon technology, war and global journalism, and incorporates work on moral panics and journalism theory, history and practice.

 

Conferences

• Cyfrwng – Welsh Media Journal conference in 2007 on the theme of Devolution and the Media: Developments in Wales and Scotland
  
  
• Films Without Frontiers: European Cinema Research Forum (ECRF) in 2006
  
  
  
• Media History (with the Dept of History and Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth) 
  
• Jean Baudrillard in 2006 (with the School of Humanities and Geography)
  
  
  

Participating in research networks:

Researchers play key roles in:

• European Cinema Research Forum (now in its seventh year, with a membership of over 200 worldwide).  The 2008 conference is to be held in Dublin in July.
• Cyfrwng (Welsh media) project, incorporating the interdisciplinary bilingual journal Cyfrwng: Media Wales Journal (published annually by University of Wales Press).
• Screening Identities: Reconfiguring Identity Politics in Contemporary European Cinema. (with Leeds)
• The Erasmus Mundus network.
• The Centre for Material Digital Culture (University of Sussex)
  

 Founding or co-founding journals relating to European media:

• Studies in European Cinema (Intellect)
• Cyfrwng: Media Wales Journal – Cyfnodolyn Cyfryngau Cymru.
• Media History
  

Building collaborative links with:

• The Mass Communication Department, University of Amsterdam;
• The Department of Media and Communication, University of Arhus;
• The Danish National School of Journalism;
• The University of Hamburg.
• The University of Potsdam
  

Establishing MA schemes (full and part-time):

• Digital Media
• Comparative Journalism 
• Erasmus Mundus Journalism within Globalisation: the European Perspective (2005): http://www.mundusjournalism.com/intro.htm
• Screening Europe: European Film Studies 

Past and Current Research Students

We have a growing number of past and current research students undertaking research based around our departments research strengths.