News
On this page:
- Media Studies Scholarship Winner awarded prize in Summer Scholarship Poster Competition
- SEFTMS Staff Receive Recognition at Staff Excellence Awards
- Thesis Students
- English Professor picks up Victoria Award
- English Professor to appear in Festival Play
- New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change
- Dr Miriam Ross on 3D Research
- Postgraduate Community
Media Studies Scholarship Winner awarded prize in Summer Scholarship Poster Competition
24 April 2012
Congratulations to Media Studies Scholarship Winner Anna Macdonald, who has recently been awarded First Equal for "Best Visual Presentation" at the Summer Scholarship Poster Competition.
This competition aims to acknowledge the research achievements of the students who participated in the Scheme during the past summer. With the support of their supervisors, scholars are invited to submit a poster describing their work and its results in a clear and interesting style similar to that used at many professional and disciplinary conferences
Anna's poster, Representations of the Desert Road: history, name and use in media, can be viewed here.
SEFTMS Staff Receive Recognition at Staff Excellence Awards
2 April 2012
Congratulations to the following staff for receiving recognition at Staff Excellence Awards
David O'Donnell
Teaching Excellence Award
David O’Donnell, Senior Lecturer, Theatre, has sustained excellence in teaching over a considerable range of courses each year. He has great enthusiasm for his subject and shows energy and commitment to his students. His creative and authentic assessment designs are highly relevant to the theatre world, and he recently co-supervised the first ever performance-based PhD at Victoria University.
David is committed to interdisciplinary teaching and is very willing to collaborate with colleagues from other disciplines. He reflects on his teaching through publications and has taken on teaching-related leadership roles within the programme and the school. Another important aspect of his teaching has been in reaching out to the community through community theatre, as well as being invited to present at teaching forums outside of Victoria University.
Paul Wolffram & Bernard Blackburn
Health & Safety Award
Senior Technical Office Paul Wolffram and Technician Bernard Blackburn are responsible for health and safety training, supervision and planning for the Film Programme, where staff and students handle a range of potentially dangerous equipment in challenging situations.
Initiatives introduced by the health and safety team include equipment assessments and training for students using it, best practice classroom sessions and briefings before crews go on location. Equipment can only be taken off site once the Film Technical Officer is confident health and safety risks are being properly managed.
At the end of the year, Paul Wolffram and Bernard Blackburn hold a debrief to consider if any practices need changing. The Film Programme has an excellent health and safety record with no accidents or injuries over the past four years.
Thesis Students
19 March 2012
Congratulations to Brady Hammond who has been awarded the first PhD in Film at Victoria University. Brady wrote a study entitled "Justifying Violence: Exploring Representations of the Negative Peace in Blockbuster US Cinema from 1996 to 2006".
Also congratulations to Lori Leigh who has been awarded her PhD in Theatre entitled "The Dramaturgy of Female Gender in Early Modern English Theatre: An investigation of the theatrical expression of gender in selected Jacobean plays, their Restoration/early eighteenth-century adaptations and both original and contemporary staging". Her supervisors were David Carnegie and Megan Evans.
English Professor picks up Victoria Award
9 March 2012
Congratulations to English Professor Harry Ricketts for receiving a 'Most Popular Supervisor' award at the recent Victorias Awards!
Organised by the PGSA and held annually to recognise and celebrate excellence at Victoria. Members of the postgraduate community and students are encouraged to nominate and vote for various categories including Most Popular Postgraduate Supervisor, Most Popular Lecturer, Most Popular Tutor and Most Popular VUW Staff Person.
For a full list of winners, click here
English Professor to appear in Festival Play
24 February 2012
Professor of English, Harry Ricketts, will be appearing in The TV3 Season of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane as part of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.
Described as "Absorbing, sometimes mind-blowing… staging the audition process is ingenious", the play is running from Friday 24 - Tuesday 28 February.
For more information or to book tickets, click here
New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change
16 February 2012
A major new publication exploring the creative achievements and cultural influence of the New Zealand film and television industries will be launched on Thursday.
"Despite the challenges of limited population size and the difficulty of obtaining adequate funding, film and television in New Zealand have been the source of significant creative achievement and cultural influence," says Victoria University’s Dr Trisha Dunleavy, the book’s lead author.
New Zealand Film and Television: Institution, Industry and Cultural Change, published by Intellect, was written by Dr Dunleavy, Senior Lecturer in Victoria’s Media Studies programme and Australian-based New Zealander Dr Hester Joyce, a Senior Lecturer in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
"One of the unusual features of this book is its focus on New Zealand film and television as production industries. The book charts the emergence and progression of New Zealand film and television over five decades of development," says Dr Dunleavy.
This is also the first book, she says, to combine an exploration of New Zealand film and television. "Using feature films and TV dramas as its case study forms, this book explores how these two screen production industries have been shaped by cultural concerns, institutional objectives, policy directives, and industry practices."
For more information, please contact: Dr Trisha Dunleavy on 04 463 6843, 021 166 1791 or trisha.dunleavy@vuw.ac.nz.
Dr Miriam Ross on 3D Research
31 January 2012
Dr Miriam Ross from the School's Media Programme recently spent time in Europe studying the history and culture of 3D Cinema.
To hear more on the research she undertook, you can hear interviews and podcasts information here:
Radio New Zealand Interview from Summer Nights, 17 January 2012
Cinematica Podcast, 17 January 2012
Postgraduate Community
10 November 2011
We have a thriving and growing community of Masters' and PhD students within the School. Here we are on a walk in the Rimutaka Forest Park.
We get together for lunch regularly and we have an annual 'work in progress' conference.