Dr Nathan Townsend
Senior Lecturer in the Creative and Cultural Industries

Profile

Biography

I am Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Business of the Creative Industries degree. I joined the School of Arts and Creative Technologies (ACT) in my current role in 2020 as part of the core team responsible for creating the degree. Prior to this, I was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow/Associate on two AHRC-funded research projects, XR Stories and Beyond the Multiplex. The former is a ‘Creative Clusters’ initiative investigating immersive technology and storytelling in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the latter researched audiences for specialised film in the English regions. Before this, I was a Humanities Research Centre (HRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of York and Associate Lecturer in Film and Television in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media, the forerunner to ACT.

Research

Overview

My core research lies within the field of Media Industry Studies and is primarily concerned with the political economy of film and television institutions. Within this area, my abiding interests include the relationship between the film industries and cultures of Britain and Hollywood and the independent film production sector in the UK. The former is explored in my first monograph, Working Title Films, A Creative and Commercial History (EUP, 2021), and the latter is under investigation in my current research on iFeatures, a low-budget filmmaking initiative supported by Creative UK, BBC Film and the BFI.

Supervision

I welcome PhD proposals from prospective students whose research interests align with my own.

External activities

Overview

I am a member of the British Association of Film and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and its Screen Industries Special Interest Group, and review for Journal of British Cinema and Television and Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. I have presented my research at several major conferences, including:

• Townsend, Nathan. (2024). ‘Creative England and the British Film Institute: Negotiating a Space for Filmmaking in the Nations and Regions’. Media
  Industries 2024, King’s College, London.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2023). ‘iFeatures: The Rise and Fall of a Low-Budget Regional Filmmaking Lab’. Locating Media Industries: Cities, Spaces, Places,
  King’s College, London.
• Townsend, Nathan (2022). ‘Channel 4 in Leeds: The Regional Devolution of a Public Service Broadcaster’, Channel 4: Then and Now, British Film Institute, London.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2021) ‘Why Leeds?’. New Frontiers? Channel 4’s Move Out of London, University of the West of England
• Townsend, Nathan. (2018) ‘Working Title Films: A British production company in European and Hollywood contexts’. Media Industries: Current Debates &Future Directions, King’s College, London
• Townsend, Nathan. (2016) ‘Working Title Films and Universal Pictures: a case study of ‘Transatlantic British Cinema’. MeCETES European Screens Conference, University of York
• Townsend, Nathan. (2015) ‘Workshop: Interviewing Industry Professionals’. White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) Symposium: Researching European Film and Television, University of York.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2015) ‘Working Title Films: Hollywood’s European Subsidiary’. ECREA Conference: European Cinemas, Intercultural Meetings: Aesthetics, Politics, Industry, History, University of Copenhagen.

Publications

Selected publications

• Wessels, Bridgette, Merrington, P. Hanchard, M and Forrest, D with the Beyond the Multiplex Team (2022) Film Audiences: Personal Journeys with Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2021). Working Title Films: A Creative and Commercial History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 
• Hanchard, Matthew, Merrington, P, Wessels, B, Rogers, K, Pidd, M, Yates, S, Forrest, D, Higson, A, Townsend, N and Smits, R (2020b). ‘Developing a Computational Ontology to Understand the Relational Aspects of Audience Formation’, Emerald Open Research. 
• Townsend, N (2020a). Channel 4 in Leeds: a new hub to unlock creativity in the UK’s nations and regions. The Conversation. August 24.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2020). ‘Working Title Films and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment II: The Rise and Fall of a Film Studio’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 40: 4, pp. 772-803.
• Wessels,  Bridgette, Forrest, D, Hanchard, Higson, A, Merrington, P, Pidd, M, Rogers, K, Smits, R, Townsend, N and Yates, S (2019a), ‘Using Mixed-Methods, a Data Model and a Computational Ontology in Film Audience Research’, Cultural Trends, 28, 2-3, pp. 118-131.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2019). ‘WT2: A low-budget experiment in ‘heart, humour and horror’, Studies in European Cinema, 16:1. pp. 38-55.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2018a). ‘Working Title Films and Universal: the integration of a British production company into a Hollywood studio’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15:2, pp. 179-203.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2018). ‘Working Title Films and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment: the making of a studio and its subsidiary’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 38:3, pp. 555-583.
• Townsend, Nathan. (2014). ‘The trans/national Divide: Towards a Typology of “Transatlantic British Cinema” During the 1930s and 1940s’. In Cinema, Television & History: New Approaches, ed. Laura Mee and Johnny Walker, 121-141. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Teaching

Undergraduate

 I lead several key BCI modules, including: 

• Creative Materials (Year 1, core BCI)
• Business for Screen (Year 1, core BCI; Year 2 & 3, optional)
• Creative Producing (Year 2 & 3, optional)

I also co-teach on the following modules:

• Individual Project (Year 3, core BCI)
• Group Project (Year 3, core BCI)

Postgraduate

I contribute teaching to the MA Management in the Creative and Cultural Industries (MACCI) programme within ACT and the MA Literature in the Creative and Cultural Industries in the Department of English and Related Literature.