Catherine Grant
Catherine Grant, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex, talk's about her move into online and open access film and moving image scholarship, and her interest in 'born digital' forms of film studies.
"In 2008, following many years lecturing in Film Studies at the University of Kent, and, prior to that, in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Strathclyde, I left my academic post, moved to the country, and took up a Visiting Research Fellowship in the School of Media, Film and Music at Sussex.
I was lucky enough to discover that what I really wanted to do, now that I actually had the time to do it, was precisely not to continue with the conventional 'text-based' research projects with which I had long been engaged as part of my job. Instead, I indulged a long-standing passion for exploring the Internet, and started to research, and experiment with, different forms of film studies editorial and curatorial work, and publishing, online. Much of that work, so far, has been focused around my blog Film Studies For Free in which I aggregate themed lists of hyperlinks to, and metadata about, online and open access film and moving image scholarship. What most interests me now, and what I am working to develop now that I am back in an academic post, are 'born digital' forms of film studies, especially online video essays about films. These forms are not only fascinating to me because they offer new possibilities for film studies publishing. They also have the potential to transform some of our research processes in ways that very much connect this work to wider developments in the digital humanities."
October 2011.
