BAFTSS Update No.1
15 March 2012

Dear BAFTSS Members and BAFTSS Listserv members

As indicated on the home page, we set up work teams at the last meeting of
the Interim Executive Committee on 5 January 2012. We are gathering
periodic reports on progress from those teams, and I plan to put together
regular short updates to keep you all in touch with what the organisation
is doing.

Chris Berry, Interim Secretary.

1. Membership (spokesperson: Alex Marlow-Mann)

The membership drive has been successful beyond our greatest expectations.
We have recruited far more rapidly than expected and currently have 235
members. Behind the scenes this has involved many hours of technical work
as well as active and targeted emailing.

The membership team is currently researching departments where Film,
Television and Screen Studies is taught across the UK, to provide data for
use in the drive for recognition nof the field (see 5).

2. Events (spokesperson: Lucia Nagib)

The organisation of a number of Postgraduate Research Student events is
underway in cooperation with various colleagues:

2.1 Two BAFTSS sponsored panels at the Scottish Consortium programme,
“Film and Film Initiatives in Scotland,” 8 June 2012, Birnam Institute,
Dunkeld.
2.1. PG Conference “Genre beyond Hollywood,” University of Southampton, on
8th July, organised in association with BAFTSS.
2.2. The University of London PG Training Day will be held on 27 October,
and will be open to BAFTSS members. This year’s theme will be “The
Senses.”
2.3. PG Conference Language in Cinema, a BAFTSS event being currently
organised by PGRs from the Centre for World Cinemas, University of Leeds
(PhD students Tamara Courage and Jo Gilbert), with the support of
Manchester (PhD student Sabina Shah), on 8-9 December at Leeds.
2.4 Chris Berry and Lucia Nagib are opening discussions with the British
Library about a thematic open day to be held there.

4. Awards (spokesperson: Tim Bergfelder)

The awards competition has been announced and publicized, with awards in 3
categories for this year: Best Monograph, Best Article in a Refereed
Journal, and Best Student essay. The deadline is 31 May 2012. For further
details on how to submit, please go to the website:
http://www.baftss.org/awards/.

Commissioning editors at publishers have been contacted and procedures for
electronic submissions of awards have been established and appear to be
functioning.

5. Political Agenda (Dina Iordanova)

5.1. JACS/HESA subject classification, We have identified a “catch-22”
situation. On the one hand, so long as our discipline does not exist as
category for which statistics are collected, we will not have a designated
REF panel to submit to, nor will grants and postgraduate award bodies
specifically assign to our field. On the other hand, so long as there is
no statistical evidence of the existence of the field, it’s had to get
people to collect the statistics. The success of the membership drive is
one step towards addressing this problem. We have also made inquiries
related to the way in which the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS), the
Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), and UKAS collect information
and classify categories related to film, television and screen studies. We
are seeking consultation with
statisticians who are advising on how to address the current
inconsistencies of coding and work out a plan on how to take up the matter
with the respective organisations.
5.2 We have had a meeting with Richard Paterson of the BFI to explore
areas of possible cooperation. These include: advising the BFI on possible
use of some of its lottery funds for research (an announcement is expected
imminently, and we will respond to it); working with the BFI to help
secure recognition of the field from HE sector fields, because this is of
mutual interest.
5.3 We have increased the range of fraternal links with other
organisations, as reflected on the resources page of the website
(http://www.baftss.org/resources/) and the relationships with other
organisations page (http://www.baftss.org/relationship/).
5.4 We have responded the UK Film Report.

6. Funding (Dina Iordanova)

We are looking into various possibilities to secure funding for
BAFTSS-related projects from organisations such as the HEA, Leadership
Foundation for Higher Education, and the BFI. If members are aware of
further funding opportunities that could be explored, we would appreciate
it if you could let Prof. James Chapman ([log in to unmask]) know.

7. Communications (Chris Berry)

Stefano Baschiera has revamped and expanded the website. We are also
building a PR list of contacts to send announcements to, and we plan more
regular updates like this one.



Chris Berry
Professor of Film & TV Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London
New Cross, London
SE14 6NW
0207-919-7565
0207-919-7616 (Fax)

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