Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies

PhD Research

Nostalgia, Time Travel and 21st Century British Television

My PhD adopts a constructionist approach to the concept of nostalgia and argues that this affective state can be theorised as a discursive and/or narrative form due to the recurrent characteristics identifiable in expressions of this feeling. The research then adopts a textual analysis approach and explores how nostalgia can be explored through the textual and production-based ‘strategies’ (Johnson 2005) of television programmes in a variety of ways.

Considering nostalgia in this manner subsequently involves engaging with a number of historical and institutional issues surrounding the TVIII era (Rogers, Epstein and Reeves 2002) and so takes a case study approach to three important programmes (and their spin-offs) from the recent genre cycle (Altman 1999) of time travel dramas that have appeared on British television.

The case studies cover:

• Nostalgia, time travel and public service broadcasting in Doctor Who (BBC 2005- ) and Torchwood (BBC 2006- )
• Nostalgia, time travel and postmodernism in Life on Mars (BBC 2006-7) and Ashes to Ashes (BBC 2008-10)
• Nostalgia, time travel and gender in Lost in Austen (ITV/Mammoth Productions 2008)

Supervisor: Dr. Matt Hills

Research Interests

• Cult TV
• Nostalgia
• Industrial/Institutional perspectives on British television
• Postmodernism

Teaching

• Autumn Semester 2006-9: Popular Culture (Dr Matt Hills and Dr Paul Bowman)
• Spring Semester 2007-10: Representations (Dr Paul Mason)