Jane Sillars
- Jane Sillars
- Programme Director, MSc in Film, Exhibition and Curation
- 10.13, David Hume Tower
- George Square
- Edinburgh
- EH8 9JX
- Work: +44 (0)131 650 2945
- Email:
- jane.sillars@ed.ac.uk
Jane Sillars joined the University of Edinburgh in 2010 to work as co-director of the MSc in Film, Exhibition and Curation alongside her job-share partner Susan Kemp.
Before this she was a member of the Department of Film, Media & Journalism at the University of Stirling. Jane has experience of researching the moving image across a range of academic, professional and industrial contexts.
Research interests
- film in the public space
- landscape, space and place
- British cinema
- representations of Scottishness
Jane has published widely, with specific research interests relating to film in the public space - audio-visual production and public policy and institutions; the poetics and politics of landscape; nation and local identities; the gendering of social and representational spaces; and on European film, identity and postcoloniality.
Her recent publications include commissioned book chapters on film and gendered space; and developing and co-editing a dossier of responses to Michel Haneke’s Caché for the cinema journal Screen.
Jane is an experienced supervisor and welcomes enquiries from prospective postgraduate students relating to her research interests.
Professional biography
After graduating in English Literature and Greek from Edinburgh University, Jane began working as a researcher on a series of short 16mm films for Channel 4. For several years Jane worked in the television industry, working for BBC Scotland and a number of independent television companies in Scotland and London. She worked as a researcher on arts programming and on current affairs and documentary production. For a number of years she was a researcher for the BBC’s television coverage of Edinburgh’s festivals, and also acted as development consultant on the BBC series Scottish Writing. She has also undertaken industry research into the audio-visual industry, including a project mapping independent production companies in Scotland for PACT; and was commissioned by BBC Scotland to review their drama output. Jane worked as a literary editor with Polygon Books, and co-edited an anthology of new Scottish women’s writing for them.
Jane studied for Masters in Media and Culture at the Baird Centre in the University of Glasgow. She taught and researched there for several years before taking up a lecturing post in the University of Stirling in 1996. Her teaching interests were diverse but include developing specialist modules on gender and representation, cinema in Britain and on Scottish screen cultures; and collaborating on courses on race and ethnicity, documentary, media events, and screen drama. Jane worked as a supervisor on taught Masters programmes on Media Management, Public Relations and Media Research. She also contributed across a range of undergraduate options on moving image analysis, digital media and media production and policy.
External networks
Jane has served as a committee member of the subject group promoting film and media education in Scotland - the Scottish Media and Communications Association. She is a member of Meccsa and is active within the recently formed Scottish Consortium for Film and Visual Culture.
She is currently serving as external examiner for Edinburgh Napier University’s BA (Hons) Photography and Film.
Selected publications
- Jane Sillars (2009) ‘Admitting the Kailyard’ in Scottish Cinema Now, Farley, Murray and Stoneman (eds), Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Sarah Neely and Jane Sillars (2009) ‘New Media / New Media Studies?’ in Media Education Journal, Spring 2009.
- Jane Sillars and Myra Macdonald (2008) ‘Gender, Spaces, Changes: Emergent Identities in a Scotland in Transition’ in The Media in Scotland, Blain and Hutchison (eds), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Elizabeth Ezra and Jane Sillars (2007) ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’, Screen vol 48 no 2.
- Elizabeth Ezra and Jane Sillars (eds) (2007) ‘The Caché Dossier’ in Screen (a series of essay responses on the film from Martine Beugnet, Max Silverman, Mark Cousins, Ranjana Khanna and Paul Gilroy initiated, edited and introduced by Ezra and Sillars)
- Jane Sillars (2004) ‘‘Industry in Focus: Scotland’.’ in The BFI Television Handbook, Alistair McGowan (ed), London: BFI.
- Martine Beugnet and Jane Sillars (2001) ‘Beau Travail: time, space and myths of identity’ in Studies in French Cinema, vol 1, no 3.
- Jane Sillars (1999) ‘Drama, Devolution and Dominant Representations’ in The Media in Britain, ed Stokes and Reading, Macmillan: Basingstoke.
This article was published on Dec 11, 2012