Professor John Tulloch

Professor Tulloch is currently ASRF Visiting Senior Research Fellow (October 2012-May 2013). He is working with Professor Andrew Hoskins on the mediatization of uncertainty: media, memory and risk.

John Tulloch’s career has spanned universities in Australia and the UK. After an undergraduate degree in history at Cambridge University, he studied for a Masters in sociology of literature, drama and media at the University of Sussex, and completed his PhD in 1973 on the theatre and literature of Anton Chekhov (in particular in relation to the new Russian medical sciences of the late Nineteenth century). His first academic position was at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he established the first Australian Masters programmes in both Film and Media studies. In 1983 he became Head of Mass Communications at Macquarie University, Sydney; and in 1993 Professor of Cultural Studies and Head of the School of Social Sciences at Charles Sturt University, New South Wales, where he was also Director of the Centre for Cultural Research into Risk. In 1999 he took up the role of Head of School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, Wales, leading the School into the highly successful 2001 RAE, when the University became one of the top ten research universities in the UK. From 2004 to 2009 he was Professor of Sociology and Media, and became Head of Research in the School of Law and Social Sciences, at Brunel University, where, together with the Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), he managed the University’s RAE 2008 application. From 2009 to 2012 he was Professor of Communications at the University of Newcastle, NSW, with a primary role in research and research mentoring.

He has published thus far 19 books (with two others currently in progress), as well as numerous articles. His books reflect his interdisciplinary background: with monographs in theatre and performance theory (Chekhov: a Structuralist Study, 1980, Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and their Audiences (2005); film history and theory (Legends On The Screen: Narrative Film in Australia 1919-1929, 1981, Australian Cinema: Industry, Narrative and Meaning, 1982); television drama (Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, 1984; A Country Practice: ‘Quality Soap’, 1986; Television Drama: Agency, Audience and Myth, 1990, Trevor Griffiths, 2007); cultural approaches to audience theory (Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek, with Henry Jenkins), Television Audiences: Cultural Theories and Methods, 2000), Performing Culture: Stories of Expertise and the Everyday, 2001); and Risk, HIV/AIDS and the media (Television, Risk and AIDS: New Cultural Approaches to Health Communication, 1997, Risk and Everyday Life, with Deborah Lupton, 2003. Two of his most recent books, One Day in July: Experiencing 7/7, 2006), and Icons of War and Terror: Media Images in an Age of International Risk, 2012, arise from his personal and conceptual close-up encounter with international terrorism on July 7, 2005.

In his three month Senior Research Fellowship at ASRF, Professor Tulloch will be working on a book with Professor Andrew Hoskins, The Mediatization of Uncertainty: Media, Memory and Risk; will explore interdisciplinary methodology, theory and epistemology with Professor Hoskins in relation to this book and towards a joint ESRC application; and will conduct workshops and seminars with students in the MSc in Global Security. He also hopes to offer his competences in research mentoring (and as a reviewer for both the Excellence of Research in Australia 2012 research audit and towards the British 2014 Research Excellence Framework) to academic staff at the University of Glasgow.