About Our Research
The Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) was established in 2009 to develop excellent research as a core activity within the Birmingham School of Media. Currently, BCMCR has over 30 research-active staff and 30 research degree students. The director of the centre is Nick Gebhardt and the Associate Directors are Kirsten Forkert and Dima Saber.
Activity at BCMCR is based around the collaborative work of six research clusters:
- Popular Music Studies
- Screen Cultures
- History, Heritage and Archives
- Journalism, Activism and Community
- Creative Industries
- Jazz Studies
Within these clusters, our team of individual researchers explore questions related to themes such as identity, history and heritage, cultural practice, production and enterprise, and technology.
Our work
BCMCR aims to produce distinctive, collaborative work within the field of media and cultural research. In the previous Research Excellence Framework process for assessing the UK HE sector, the majority of BCMCR research environment and activities were judged as of a quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
We have delivered, or participated in a number of major, externally-funded, research projects. These projects were built on inter-disciplinary partnerships with other universities and organisations which included:
We welcome visiting researchers from across the world and hold regular research seminars which mix presentations from staff, students and speakers from a range of our collaborative partnerships. Please feel free to contact us if you have a research enquiry.
Courses we offer
We supervise research degrees to MPhil and PhD level, and the 20-plus team of PhD students currently studying with us play an important part in the centre's research culture. We also deliver MA programmes which were established on the basis of the research work generated within the centre.
These cover music industries, radio, social media, online journalism, screen studies, media for social change, and enterprise and cultural policy. Research from centre members is also prominent in the curriculum of BA programmes associated with similar media sectors.
Interested in our Media and Cultural Studies PhD?
If you have any questions or queries regarding our Media and Cultural Studies PhD, or if you have a research idea you would like to discuss, please send us an initial PhD enquiry. This gives us an opportunity to answer your questions and/or talk through and focus your PhD research proposal before you make your final online application.