Communication, Cultural and Media Studies

As the media industries continue to be transformed by social developments like #MeToo and recently, COVID-19, it is of utmost importance that a discipline such as Communication, Cultural and Media Studies plays a significant role in rethinking media as a force for change.

Our research focuses around the development of excellence and innovation in socially engaged media research. We aim to creatively rethink what film, media and computing can achieve in diverse communities, driving forward innovative approaches to collaboration across theory and practice, public engagement, and community/industry impact.

Our areas of research strength are based around three new areas of strategic interdisciplinary focus:

• Digital Ecologies
• Film and Social Context and
• Play and Multiplatform.

These three themes have been transformed into active, operational research clusters within the Centre for Media Research, structuring the research activity of our established and early career researchers.

The Centre for Media Research, itself the unit’s structural mechanism for enabling research and impact strategy across Film, Media and Creative Computing at Bath Spa University, instills precisely this thinking in its approach to research excellence and innovation.

Based in the School of Creative Industries, the Centre positions film, media and creative computing at the heart of social and community dynamics that affect daily life, bringing together media artists and researchers, filmmakers, game and app developers; and benefitting from interdisciplinary engagement across the fields of Sociology, Theatre, Heritage and Environmental Humanities.

Related research centres

• Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (Strategic)
• Centre for Media Research (School based)
• Making Books Research Centre (School based).

Research projects

• We Make Stuff
• Artswork Media Round Tables
• Let's Make Stuff