Drama: Theatre, Film, Television

Awards available	MPhil MLitt PhD
Duration of programme	MPhil: one year full-time; two years part-time MLitt: two years full-time; four years part-time PhD: three years full-time; six years part-time
Number of places	Not fixed

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Programme overview

The Department is well known for its excellent research and offers a wide range of topics for postgraduate study in the areas of Film, Television and Theatre and Performance. Research may be undertaken as a wholly written dissertation or as practice-based research.

A broad research portfolio is on offer, drawing from staff expertise in: Film, Cinema and Television Studies; Theatre History, Dramatic Theory and Practice; Critical Studies (including Comparative Studies and studies relating to films or broadcast drama).

Where a subject spans the work of another department, arrangements for joint supervision will be made where possible.

Research groups

Research applications are welcomed in the following, non-exclusive areas:

Film and television histories
Film history, theory and criticism
Television studies
Documentary practice
Theatre and performance histories,especially early modern, 19th- and 20th-century work
Contemporary live art and performance, particularly through practice-as-research
Dramatic theory and practice

The Department leads a University Research Theme entitled Screen Research @ Bristol, which connects researchers across the Faculty and University who are involved in interdisciplinary film, television and screen research. Members of staff have led externally funded research projects in a number of areas including Colour Film Technologies, Practiceas- Research in Performance and Screen, and Performing the Archive. Further information about these and other projects is available on our website.

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Entry requirements

MPhil: An upper second-class honours degree (or international equivalent). MLitt/PhD: A pass at MA level (or international equivalent).

For information on international equivalent qualifications, please see our International Office website.

Admissions statement

Read the programme admissions statement for important information on entry requirements, the application process and supporting documents required.

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Key research interests

Film and Television

Dr Alex Clayton, Aesthetics of screen comedy; the body in performance; tone, perspective, intention, rhetoric; film criticism and the appreciation of film style; Hollywood cinema; the work of relatively neglected or underappreciated film makers.

Dr Pete Falconer, The forms and genres of popular cinema, primarily in relation to Hollywood; the Western; horror; contemporary Hollywood and other popular cinemas; film genre; film style and aesthetics; music in film; film violence; censorship; the theory and practice of intertextuality.

Dr Jacqueline Maingard, Issues of identity and the cinema; Third Cinema; African cinema (especially South African cinema); documentary film theory and practice.

Dr Kristian Moen, Fantasy cinema and modernity; early French cinema; American cinema from the 1910s and 1920s; fairy tales; intermediality; consumer culture and spectacle; new media and pre-cinematic technologies; contemporary Hollywood; silent cinema.

Dr Angela Piccini, Mediatized archaeological practice and performativity, centring on contemporary archaeologies (in and of the 'present'); material excess, location and networks, creativity and archaeological sensibilities; philosophies of time-space; mixed-mode research. She also supervises projects in documentary and television studies.

Dr Helen Piper, British broadcasting and television drama, including: representations of class; dramatic performativity in factual television; memory, nostalgia and cultures of television viewing; British television detective series.

Professor Sarah Street, British cinema; audiences and film reception; Hollywood cinema; film costume and accessories; genre and gender studies; set design and the histories, aesthetics and economics of colour cinema; silent cinema history; film preservation and restoration; film star studies.

Theatre and Performance

Dr Paul Clarke, Devising and collaborative authorship; technologies in performance; performative documentation; practice-asresearch; documentary or verbatim theatre; Live Art and Body Art; British and American experimental theatre.

Dr Kate Elswit, Spectatorship; modernism in and beyond Europe; bodies and technology; exile; practice-based research, archives and re-enactment; dance theatre; contemporary European performance; critical theory; reality television; cross-media connections.

Dr Catherine Hindson, Late 19th- and early 20th-century entertainment industries and historiography; fin-de-siecle female celebrity; skirt dancing and magic performances; Herbert and Maud Beerbohm Tree.

Professor Simon Jones, Contemporary British performance and theatre; pragmatics of creativity in theatre; performance theory and work; writer and director of Bodies in Flight theatre company.

Dr Katja Krebs, Translation and adaptation; translation and theatre practice; historiography; construction of dramatic traditions; early 20th-century European performance practice(s).

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Apply online

Application deadline: Not fixed