Dear Meccsa Colleagues: I append the spring programme for the Centre for MEdia Research, University of Ulster: All welcome, if you are in the vicinity.

THE CENTRE FOR MEDIA RESEARCH 
in the SCHOOL OF MEDIA, FILM AND JOURNALISM 
at the UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER AT COLERAINE: 
SEMINAR PROGRAMME 
SPRING 2007 

The seminars run on Wednesdays from 1.00 - 3.00pm in the Link Lounge, 

Coleraine campus, except where otherwise indicated on the programme. 

Admission to all seminars is free. For further details
please contact the Cultural Development Office, Coleraine
campus. Tel: 028 7032 4683 Email: [log in to unmask] OR the CMR secretary,
Barbara Butcher, [log in to unmask] 


To contribute to, ask about, or comment on the seminars,
please contact Dr Robert Porter, School of Media, Film and
Journalism. Tel: 028 70324974 Email: [log in to unmask]

THE PROGRAMME:

Wednesday 14 February 

CMR/RESEARCH INSTITUTE PRESENTATION 
'Documenting Memories: the role of the documentary 
maker in constructing 'narratives of trauma’. 

Anne Crilly, lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism 
will screen and discuss her documentary film LIfting a Dark 
Cloud: The Kathleen Thompson Case (2004, 45 mins). In 
November 1971, Derry mother Kathleen Thompson was killed 
by the British Army in her back garden. Like many other cases 
at the time, there was never a police investigation into her 
death and no-one was ever charged with her murder. This is 
the story of the forgotten events of that night and the legacy it 
left for a family and a community. This continues Crilly’s recent 
work in exploring issues of grief and closure in post conflict 
Northern Ireland in the award winning short film LIMBO and 
the documentary Witness: The Bloody Sunday Inquiry. 

Venue - Link Lounge, Coleraine, at 1pm. 


Wednesday 28 February 

GUEST SPEAKER - Children, Humour and TV 

Dr. Maya Götz, Head of International Central Institute for Youth 
and Educational Television (IZI), Munich, will discuss the 
findings of IZI’s international study on children, television and 
humour in which the University of Ulster was a partner. The 
study used a 'funometer' to build up a picture of children's 
reactions to comic moments as they watched six different 
humorous shows from the six different countries. The study 
also produced qualitative material from discussions with 
children in which their views about gender, national identity, 
cultural differences, the limits of comedy, ethical issues around 
exploitation and cruelty, and many others, were revealed. 

Venue - Link Lounge, Coleraine, at 1pm. 


Wednesday 14 March 

Guest Speaker - ‘TV Aesthetics’ 

Dr. Karen Lury, Reader in Film and Television Studies, 
University of Glasgow, will demonstrate how the formal 
analysis of television may work to ‘open up’ the texts of 
television in interesting ways. Focusing on the formal 

organisation of sound in the American Crime Drama, CSI: 
Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000-), the presentation will 
address the various aspects of ‘sound’ - voice, sound effects, 
ambient sound and music - orchestrated within the programme. 
This formal analysis will then be linked to the spiritual or religious 
associations of ‘sound’ and hearing, which could suggest that 
the lead investigator’s increasing deafness over Seasons One 
to Three of the programme thus acts not only as a mechanical 
problem in relation to solving crime but as a spiritual or 
religious crisis for the character and for the series itself. 

Venue: Link Lounge, Coleraine at 1pm. 


Wednesday 28 March 

GUEST SPEAKER - ‘Here to Stay’: The Expression 
of Migrant Subjectivity 

Dr Alan Grossman and Dr Áine O’Brien, Centre for Transcultural 
Research and Media Practice, Dublin Institute of Technology, 
will introduce and screen their documentary film, Here To Stay 
(2006, 72 mins). The film narrates the story of a Filipino nurse 
and the collectivised expression of his migrant labour activism, 
in dialogue with civil society representatives, probing and 
challenging the inadequacies and market-driven characteristics 
of immigration policy in Ireland. Grossman and O’Brien are coeditors of a combined book/DVD-ROM titled Projecting Migration: 
Transcultural Documentary Practice (2007, Wallflower Press). 

Venue: Link Lounge, Coleraine at 1pm. 


Wednesday 18 April 

CMR/RESEARCH INSTITUTE PRESENTATION 

Language, identity and the construction of a “Singaporean” 
cinema -Felicia Chan, Research Associate, Centre for Media 
Research, will discuss the use of language in contemporary 
Singapore films in relation to the wider politics of language 
operating in the city state. Whilst many of the films attempt to 
reflect the diversity of the local vernacular, they often also 
have to negotiate state policies on language use in the public 
(and, some would say, private) sphere(s). 

Great transformations and the public sphere in Ireland 
Ken Murphy, Research Associate, Centre for Media Research, 
will evaluate the recent transformation in material conditions that 
constitute challenging political, cultural and economic contexts 
for the realisation of public sphere(s) in the Republic of Ireland. 

Using the heuristic of public service broadcasting he will assess 
the condition of the ‘public’ in contemporary Irish society. 

Venue: Link Lounge, Coleraine at 1pm. 


Wednesday 2 May 

CMR/RESEARCH INSTITUTE PRESENTATION 
'The recipe for creating a world-beating indigenous 
digital media industry' 

Colm Murphy, lecturer in the School of Media, Film and 
Journalism, will outline the measures used in the Republic of 
Ireland to create a world-leading digital media industry. The 
republic has become one of the world's leading exporters of 
digital media and services over the past 10 years with companies 
like Google, Yahoo and e-Bay basing some of their operations 
there. This new PhD research, facilitated through unique access 
to Irish policymakers and companies, has been used in World 
Bank seminars and other international forums. Murphy writes 
regularly for The Sunday Times, London, and Penguin books, 
mainly on business and economics. His most recent RTE 
documentary on Irish business received one of the channel's 
highest viewerships for the genre. 

Venue: Link Lounge, Coleraine at 1pm. 


Wednesday 16 May 

GUEST SPEAKER - ‘From Langham Group to Ken Loach: 
Experimental Television Drama in the 1950’s and 1960’s 

John Hill, Professor of Media at Royal Holloway, London. 
Author of Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema 1956-63, 
British Cinema in the 1980s, Cinema and Northern Ireland and 
currently completing a book on film and TV director, Ken 
Loach. The paper will look at how the ‘experimental’ emerged 
in TV drama of the late 1950s and 1960s, considering the 
work of the Langham Group in productions such as The 
Torrents of Spring (1959), breaking away from conventions of 
theatre and cinema and evolving a form ‘exclusive to the 
medium’; moving on to examine Troy Kennedy Martin’s efforts 
to align TV experiment with ‘mass audience viewing’ in the 
ground-breaking series, Diary of a Young Man (1964). 
Concentrating on episodes directed by Ken Loach, the 
presentation will conclude with an assessment of the influence 
of these early experiments on subsequent TV drama. 

Venue: Link Lounge, Coleraine at 1pm. 
Professor Máire Messenger Davies
Director, Centre for Media Research
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html
Director, Media Studies Research Institute

School of Media, Film & Journalism
University of Ulster at Coleraine
Cromore Rd
Coleraine BT52 1SA
Northern Ireland

Telephone: + 44(0)28 70324069
Fax:  +44(0)28 70324964
email: [log in to unmask]