Irish Screen Studies is a forum for researchers in film, television and other media. Our focus is on researchers who work in Ireland and for those who work on Irish themes. Among other things, we provide information about research and job opportunities, an index of personal profiles of individual researchers, and links to items of interest to our readers. We trace our roots to an initiative by film researchers at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Ulster, but Irish Screen Studies includes people from any and all education or other institutions and organizations in Ireland and elsewhere.
ISS was founded in 2003 by Kevin Rockett (Trinity College Dublin) and John Hill (Ulster University). Originally known as the “Irish Postgraduate Film Research Seminar”, the event was developed as a cross-border initiative to connect postgraduate and early-career researchers in screen studies throughout this island and beyond. For over twenty years, the seminar has been hosted by a variety of third-level institutions in Ireland, North and South, and has provided a research platform for emerging scholars who have gone on to play key international roles in screen scholarship, industry, and popular culture.
Irish Screen Studies is the home of the annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar, formerly known as the Irish Postgraduate Film Research Seminar. Since its inauguration in 2002, ISSS has been hosted by the major universities and colleges around the island of Ireland. The seminar is aimed at academic researchers and practitioners in film and screen cultures in the broadest sense, including: audio, film, television, digital media, transmedia, video games, screen performance, design and technologies, as well as related interdisciplinary activities. The ISS event promotes the exchange of ideas and offers postgraduate and early career researchers and practitioners an ideal opportunity to present evolving screen-related research and practice in a constructive and encouraging forum.
The annual seminar offers a unique platform for the presentation of new work – research, practice, and research through practice – by scholars and filmmakers from third-level institutions in Ireland, as well as from those working on Irish screen-related topics in other universities and colleges worldwide.
The Board of Irish Screen Studies aims to maintain an inclusive organisation open to all individuals. We are committed to preventing any form of discrimination on any basis, including national origin, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class, ability, age, contractual status, and migration or other legal status.
Work in Progress: Database and archive
All of the research that has been held at this event since its inauguration in 2002, with links to researchers’ profiles and to their publications, will be published on this website soon.
What is Screen Studies?
We take an expansive view of the field that is traditionally referred to as Film Studies, so that covers screen culture in the broadest sense, which includes cinema (the most widely studied category), as well as short film, television, digital media, networks, transmedia, technoculture, gaming, video art, and any other cultural artefact that takes place on screen. Cinema’s boundaries have never stopped shifting in its short history, and our deliberate inclusion of other media inside the fold of screen research has the aim of measuring the shifts that are being caused by the current phase of digitization.