Justin Smith

Director of the Cinema and Television History Research Institute.

A cultural historian with a special interest in post-war British cinema, television and popular music, my research interests embrace production, exhibition and reception practices, cult film fandom and stardom, and issues of cultural identity and popular memory. I am also interested in approaches to mapping creativity within the cultural industries, UK film policy, censorship, and the production of industry-led research. I was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture, 2010-2014 and Fifty Years of British Music Video, 2015-2018. I am the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2010), and the co-author (with Sue Harper) of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh University Press, 2011). I am also reviews editor of The Journal of British Film and Television .

I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, the Royal Television Society and the Creative Industries Federation.

I am also a researcher and performer of traditional songs with connections to my native Isle of Wight.