Contact: Ian Conrich

    Ian has supervised three theses to completion and examined a further 7 PhDs. He has also supervised numerous MA theses. He welcomes enquiries from new PhD students.

    PhD/M.Phil supervision - completed

    • Andrea Wright, Gender, Representation, and the Appeal of Screen Fairytales, November 2007, Roehampton University. Dr Wright is now Senior Lecturer in Film at Edge Hill University.
    • Clare Parfitt, Capturing the Cancan: Body Politics from the Enlightenment to Postmodernity, January 2008, Roehampton University. Dr Parfitt is now Senior Lecturer in Dance at the University of Chichester.
    • Victoria Straker, Historical Representation in New Zealand Film, September 2010, Birkbeck, University of London.

    Current PhD supervision

    • Laura Sedgwick, Haunted Spaces in Contemporary Horror Cinema: Set Designs and the Gothic.

    Other supervision

    Since establishing the Centre for New Zealand Studies, Ian has supervised 3 further PhD students:

    • Reg Eyre, Early Motorcycling, Transportation and Roads in New Zealand
    • Andrew MacDonald, The New Zealand Experience at Passchendaele
    • James Patterson, Transformationalist Policies and the Third Labour Government

    From September 2004 to January 2005, Ian was an overseas supervisor for Jesko Jockenhöevel's thesis on audiences of Japanese anime. The student, who was studying at the University of Potsdam, Germany, was based in London for 4 months, researching UK audiences.

    PhD external examiner

    • December 2012, Macquarie University - for a thesis Behind the sounds: The evolution of film soundtrack roles in Australia and New Zealand
    • 7 December 2012, University of Avignon - for a thesis Some people said that tribes stopped exisiting in the 1970s: The Maori Gangs of Wellington
    • 28 November 2009, University of La Réunion - for a thesis Cinema, Colonialism and Identity. The Birth and Development of Sri Lankan Cinema, 1896-1966
    • October 2008, Murdoch University, Australia - for a thesis Do You Come From a Land Down Under? The Antipodes and its Popular Culture
    • September 2008, University of Waikato, New Zealand - for a thesis New Zealand Cinema and Cultural Identity
    • 6 March 2002, University of Kent - for a thesis Literary Influences in the Work of David Cronenberg
    • 22 March 2001, University of Bristol - for a thesis 'Through a Glass Darkly'. Simulated Horror in Film: An Aetiology and Audience Activity

    Research Masters external examiner

    • January 2008, Murdoch University, Australia - for a thesis, Spiegelbild: Seeing our Reflection in the Art of H.R. Giger

    Ian's 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.

    Teaching experience

    Ian has extensive experience of teaching, leading and developing undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UK universities. The modules that he has convened or supported as a lecturer, include:


    • National Film Cultures; Postcolonialism and Cinema; Asia-Pacific Cinema; New Zealand Film; British Cinema; Italian Cinema; Sixties British Cinema; Film in the East
    • Contemporary American Cinema; American Youth Cinema; Genre and Cultural Context; The American Musical; Science Fiction Film; Reading Popular Horror; Dystopian Film; Genre and Gender; The Horror Film; Genre, Narrative, and Cultural Representation; Popular Cinema; Masculinity and Film
    • Forms of Fiction; Theoretical Frameworks of Film and Television; British Television Drama; Introduction to Cinema Studies; Developments in Moving Image A, Developments in Moving Image B; Television Institutions and Audiences; Film History and Criticism to 1945; Reading Film; Television and Tourism; Schedules and Margins; Image, Music, Sound
    • Experiencing the Media; Culture, Media, Text; Popular Culture