Dr Steve Presence

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  • Qualifications:PhD in Film (UWE, 2013); Degree in Film Studies and Literature (UWE, 2009, 1st Class)
  • Position:Associate Professor - Film Studies
  • Department:Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE)
  • Telephone:+4411732 87174
  • Email:Stephen2.Presence@uwe.ac.uk
  • Social media: LinkedIn logo Facebook logo

About me

I am an Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Department of Creative and Cultural Industries at UWE. Most of my work focuses on the film and television industries or on activist film culture, and I have published widely in these fields in various books, reports and peer-reviewed journals including the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, the Journal of British Cinema and Television and Screen. Recent publications include Go West 2! Bristol's Film and Television Industries (2022); the Making it Real (2021) and Keeping it Real (2020) reports on UK documentary; and the edited collection, Contemporary Radical Film Culture: Networks, Organisations and Activists (2020). I am a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College and sit on the editorial boards of the Journal of Media Practice and Education and Frames Cinema Journal.

I have led several large research projects as Principal Investigator. These include 'UK Feature Docs' (2018-2021), an AHRC-funded study of the UK's feature-length documentary film industry; 'Sustaining Alternative Film Cultures' (2015-18), an AHRC-funded international research networking project for progressive film organisations in association with the Radical Film Network, which I co-founded in 2013 and which is now the largest network for alternative film culture in the world; and 'Understanding Watershed' (2017-18), a study of Bristol's flagship independent cinema that resulted in a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the AHRC – 'Independent Cinema in the Age of Video-on-Demand' (2020-23) – which I am co-supervising with colleagues from UWE Bristol, Exeter and Watershed. I am currently working on an AHRC Follow-on Funding project with stakeholders in the documentary film industry.  

I teach on the BA Film Studies and MA Film and Television Industries and welcome enquiries from potential PhD candidates interested in screen industry studies, documentary, political cinema, British film and television and activist film culture.

Publications

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