News

1970s Research Project is ‘outstanding’

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:39:00 BST

1970’s British Cinema research project is given rare award of ‘outstanding’ by the Arts Humanities and Research Council (AHRC).

The project: 1970s British Cinema, Film and Video: Mainstream and Counter-Culture has been awarded this high rating as it has furthered research in the field and laid the foundations for future research work in the School of Creative Arts, Film and Media at the University of Portsmouth. The project has produced high level outputs, and funded the work of three PhD students.

With funding from a three year Major Research Grant from the AHRC ending in 2009, Professor Sue Harper, the Principal Investigator for the project along with co-investigators Dr Dave Allen and Dr Justin Smith worked on this project which included talking to film workers from the 1970s such as Don Boyd, David Curtis, Mamoun Hassan, Glenda Jackson, Sandy Lieberson, Ken Russell, Michael Winner and others.

The assessors were particularly impressed with the high level outputs for the project including the website (www.1970sproject.co.uk), a range of scholarly articles and two quality books Laurel Forster and Sue Harper (eds) British Culture and Society in the 1970s: the Forgotten Decade (Cambridge Scholars Press) and Sue Harper and Justin Smith, British Film Culture in the 1970s: the Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh University Press).

The project funded two PhDs (Sian Barber and Patti Gaal-Holmes) who both submitted on time and passed, and the project attracted another PhD student (Sally Shaw) whom the AHRC decided to fund.

The AHRC praised the team for fostering and furthering research in the field. A range of colleagues from SCAFM were involved in the project, and they contributed to conferences, TV and radio broadcasts, and invited lectures.

It is hoped that the project will lay the foundations for further research work in SCAFM.  It was noted that the 1970s project had prepared the way for the major four-year Channel 4 project (headed by Dr Justin Smith) which the AHRC funds at present.

The 1970s project is now completed, Sue Harper and Dave Allen have retired, and the group is disbanded, but it is to be hoped that the spirit which supported initiative, ambition and commitment to high level research will be maintained in these difficult times.