Dr Nathan Townsend
Senior Lecturer in the Creative and Cultural Industries

Profile

Biography

A am Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Business of the Creative Industries. I joined the School of 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 the Yorkshire and Humber region, 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 an 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

Memberships

I am a member of the British Association of Film and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) and its Screen Industries Special Interest Group. I have presented several conferences in the UK and Europe, including New Frontiers? Channel 4’s Move Out of London, University of the West of England (2021), Media Industries Conference, King’s College London (2018), MeCETES European Screens Conference, University of York (2016), ECREA Conference: European Cinemas, Intercultural Meetings: Aesthetics, Politics, Industry, History, University of Copenhagen (2015) and White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) Symposium: Researching European Film and Television, University of York (2015).

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 am Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Business of the Creative Industries. In this role I lead several key 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 also contribute to teaching on 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.