Professor Jonathan Bignell

I work primarily on television history and the methodologies of television and film analysis. So my work includes using archival sources alongside the detailed study of the audiovisual form and style of films and television programmes, mainly from the UK and USA. I was taught by Raymond Williams, Stephen Heath and other screen theorists, studying at the universities of Cambridge and Sussex.

I also have longstanding research interests in Samuel Beckett's media drama. I have led teams of researchers on several major collaborative externally-funded research projects: 

• Spaces of Television (2010–2015)
• Acting with Facts (2007–2010)
• Beckett and the Phenomenology of Doodles (2006–2009)
• British TV Drama and Acquired US Programmes, 1970–2000 (2005–2008)
• Cultures of British Television Drama, 1960–1982 (2002–2006)
• The BBC Wednesday Play and Post-War British Drama (1996–2000).

And most recently, on Harold Pinter: Histories and Legacies, funded by AHRC from 2017-20, I led research into Pinter's work for television, radio and cinema.