Lecturer in Film Studies Dr Iain Smith has been selected to take part in the BBC’s New Generation Thinkers scheme for 2018.

The scheme, run by BBC Radio 3, BBC Arts and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), gives 10 academics the opportunity to make programmes for Radio 3 and other outlets, as well as contributing to wider media through the AHRC. In addition, the scheme partners with BBC Four, where some of the selected academics will be given the opportunity to present a programme for TV. Iain, whose research is focused on transnational dimensions of popular cinema with a particular interest in the ways in which texts are adapted and remade globally, has been selected from hundreds of applicants to become one of the scheme’s resident academic contributors for the year.

New Generation Thinkers launched in 2010 to help the next generation of academics find new and wider audiences for their research by giving them a platform to share their ideas and allowing them the space to challenge our thinking.

Iain said: ‘I am really excited to have the opportunity to bring my research on globalisation and cinema to a wider audience through this scheme. I am particularly looking forward to developing my own programmes for BBC Radio 3 and learning how to communicate my research to the public. I've been hugely impressed by many of the scholars who have been New Generation Thinkers in the past, so I am delighted to be following in their footsteps.’

Professor Russell Goulbourne, Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, said: ‘I am absolutely delighted that Dr Iain Smith has been named as one of this year’s ‘New Generation Thinkers’. We as a Faculty are committed to communicating our research to the widest possible audiences. As an expert in contemporary cinema, Iain is particularly well placed to take our public engagement to new heights.’

Iain is currently putting together a research project on 'De-Westernizing Cult Film Studies' that aims to challenge the West-centrism of the discipline, and he is helping with the digital restoration of the film Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (best known as the 'Turkish Star Wars') for a screening on Friday 4 May at The Cinema Museum in London.