Dr Paul Moody
Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications

Summary

Paul is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, with research interests in British cinema history, Hollywood and US cultural diplomacy, emerging digital media, and the horror film. He is also a digital media practitioner whose work has won awards at international festivals.

Paul's most recent monograph, EMI Films and the Limits of British Cinema (2018), develops the first historical analysis of the largest British film company of the 1970s, EMI Films. The book argues that EMI’s amorphous nature as a ‘transnational’ film company problematizes traditional approaches to the creation of cultural ‘canons’ and the definition of ‘national culture’, with one reviewer commenting that it makes a ‘very significant contribution not only to British cinema history but also to British cultural history in general’. Paul's work on the company’s output is an ongoing research interest and currently, he is developing a project with the British Film Institute on the career of EMI Films’ first Head of Production, Bryan Forbes, analysing his work as part of a wider examination of how polymathic artists can be interpreted by cultural historians.

Paul's other current research interest focuses on the connections between Hollywood and the U.S. Department of State's global network of embassies. His work in this field has been published in Media, Culture and Society and the International Journal of Communication, and he is completing a monograph on this topic provisionally titled The US Embassy-Hollywood Complex. In this book, Paul employs archival records from the US State Department to question existing theories of globalization which present state sovereignty in decline vis-à-vis ‘globalizing’ media companies. He argues that instead, these examples show how the US government has supported Hollywood’s global economic interests using a variety of strategies and tactics, problematizing attempts to explain Hollywood’s cultural dominance solely as a product of its wide public appeal or as a result of laissez-faire economic policy.

Qualifications

• PhD International History, London School of Economics - Thesis Title: The Lion Had Wings: The Invention of British Cinema, 1895-1939
• MA History of Film & Visual Media, Birkbeck College (University of London)
• BA Film and Television Studies, Brunel University London
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Responsibility

Paul is module leader for CO1600 Media Production I: Non-Fiction and CO2601 Media Production II: Fiction. He also teaches on SO1700 Making Sense of Culture & Society: Issues I and is the co-Senior Tutor for the Department of Social and Political Sciences.