Dr Stephen Morgan

TEACHING RÉSUMÉ

I am currently Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Bristol, on a short-term, full-time contract, contributing primarily to the MA in Film and Television.

Over the last few years, I have gained extensive experience in higher education teaching, leading modules at a range of UK institutions. During this time, I have taught across a wide range of modules, encompassing historical, contextual, theoretical and practical approaches to screen media and culture. In many cases, I have been responsible for the design of new modules, or the redesign/adaptation of existing ones, often with the aim of broadening their representative remit via decolonising or diversifying approaches across core films and readings.

In 2021/22, I was Visiting Lecturer/Hourly Paid Lecturer at several institutions, serving as module convenor for first year survey modules Introduction to Film Studies: Forms and Film History: 1930-1960 at King’s College London (where I was nominated for a King’s Education Award); co-convenor for introductory module Screen Histories, Level 5 module Independent Filmmaking Practices, and MA/MSc module Film Research Workshop at the University of Greenwich; convenor for theory and practice module Film Reviewing and Curating, which I’ve been teaching at London South Bank University since 2019; and tutor/supervisor and workshop leader for the final year Degree Essay module at the University of Hertfordshire. I have also recently served as Guest Lecturer at the London Film Academy, providing contextual film history/aesthetics lectures and dissertation supervision, and am currently supervising dissertation projects on the MA Filmmaking and MA Screenwriting programmes.

In 2019/20 and 2020/21, I served two short full-time stints as Lecturer in Film at Queen Mary, University of London, where I co-taught a first year survey module Approaches and Analysis, as well as teaching and convening upper level modules, Introduction to British Cinema and British Cinema: From the New Wave to the Advent of Channel 4. Whilst at QMUL, I also served as Senior Departmental Examiner for Film Studies, supervised final year dissertations, and contributed to the core module in the MA in Film Studies.

In previous HPL stints at the University of Greenwich, I served as module convenor/leader for Independent Filmmaking Practices (Level 5), Cinema and Space, and Cinema and Time (both Level 6), and co-convenor for first year survey module, Screen Histories (Level 4). Assessments on these modules include a mix of traditional written essays and innovative assessment methods such as video essays and creative projects. In 2020/21, I also co-convened the first semester of a core MA/MSc module, Film Research Workshop, introducing students to the intersections of research and practice via tailored workshops and guest lecturers from film practitioners within the department.

During and after my studies at King’s College London, I also gained a range of experience as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and Visiting Lecturer in both the Film Studies and English departments. During this time, I taught a range of formal, historical, contextual, and theoretical modules at undergraduate level, including a number of seminar-led modules, where I was the sole teaching contact for the students. As well as leading seminars, I also introduced screenings and delivered guest lectures on a number of modules (including providing last minute cover to deliver the first two lectures of core first year module Introduction to Film Studies: Forms in 2018). Between 2017 and 2019, I also co-convened London and Film, an annual module taught to international undergraduates visiting the Summer School @ King’s College London. These intensive three-week modules involve daily screenings, lectures, and seminars (delivered by myself and a colleague), as well as supervised trips to London museums and sites of topical interest.

Elsewhere, I have also served as an hourly paid Visiting Lecturer at London South Bank University (a theory and practice module, Film Reviewing and Curating, which I’ve taught every year since 2019/20) and the University of Winchester (an Australian cinema module titled Discontent Down Under, 2019/20). Between 2016 and 2018, I was also employed as a Visiting Lecturer (non-teaching) at the University of Hertfordshire, marking essays on the history and context modules for students studying towards a BA in Film and Television (Production).

DECOLONISING BRITISH FILM HISTORY

As well as standard teaching assistant duties at King’s College London, I also collaborated on the transformation of the British National Cinema module, working with module convenor Dr Lawrence Napper and our teaching colleague Dr Kulraj Phullar to place the focus more squarely onto British cinema’s depictions of, interactions with, and reflections upon Empire.

This led the three of us to present conference panels on Decolonising British Film History at Modern British Studies (University of Birmingham, July 2017) and the British Association for Film, Television, and Screen Studies [BAFTSS] in 2018 (University of Kent) and 2019 (University of Birmingham), for which were joined by KCL colleague Sonal Kantaria. This experience has had a transformative effect on my teaching, and I now seek to engage with questions of Empire and its legacies wherever possible in my teaching (from discussing settler colonial space in Cinema and Space at Greenwich, to a week on Indigenous Stardom via David Gulpilil for Approaches and Analysis at Queen Mary).

Many of these pedagogical approaches have also fed back into my research in an effort to further decolonise understandings of British film history and film studies in the British context. As well as the aforementioned conference papers, preliminary research on settler/national cinema manifested in the second Menzies Screening series, which I curated and hosted at the Menzies Australia Institute across the 2018/19 academic year. These ideas will be central to my next research project which aims to take a comparative approach to decolonize understandings of ‘national cinema’ in the settler nations of Australia, Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand, early outputs of which include my video essay on David Gulpilil, settler cinema and the Indigenous body (produced for the 2021 BAFTSS Conference) and my booklet essay for the BFI release of The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005).

LAST UPDATED: 29/09/2022