Sylvia Harvey

Sylvia Harvey, Professor of Broadcasting Policy, has worked in Higher Education in Britain for 35 years, most recently at Sheffield Hallam University and at the University of Lincoln.

She completed her doctoral studies in film at the University of California, Los Angeles, returning to teach film studies in the North East of England where she was also involved in setting up a cross-sectoral association of film and television teachers. She served as a member of the British Film Institute’s Production Board and the Arts Council’s Advisory Committee on Film and Broadcasting. In the early 1990s she was seconded to work as Media Advisor to Sheffield City Council where she worked with others to establish a Media Development Fund, a Cultural Industries Quarter and a four-screen independent cinema. She was also a founder member and continues to serve on the Board of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival. She is a Trustee of the Voice of the Listener, a member of the Royal Television Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was recently appointed as Chair of the Citizens’ Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting (CCPSB). Her publications include May ’68 & Film Culture and, as co-editor, Enterprise and Heritage: Cross Currents of National Culture, The Regions, The Nations and The BBC and Television Times. Her collection Trading Culture: Global Traffic and Local Cultures in Film and Television was published in 2006.

Sylvia has also published on the history and role of Channel Four in The Television History Book (Hilmes), on the organisation and regulation of broadcasting in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, Toward a Political Economy of Culture (Calabrese and Sparks) and Blackwell’s Companion to Television (Wasco), on UK film policy in the journals Screen and Political Quarterly and on Ofcom in Screen.