Focus of the PhD and Bradford Film Festival

I had always heard that the topic of a PhD bounces around a bit before being set in stone but boy did I not expect to go through so many changes of topics in my first six months. In the time since January alone, my research focus has moved from the sociological context of children's culture and their media consumption to the cognitive impact of emotions on motivation for learning and more specific writing. By now, my bibliography includes more than 300 items, half of which I have read whole.

The outline of the thesis has grown to 30,000 words and includes
- definitions of film and media literacy
- an introduction to writing and the teaching of writing
- the connection of emotions and motivation and
- the connection between emotion, motivation and film

I'm pretty sure I'll have to cut down things pretty soon!!

On a separate note, I had the honour of being part of the Bradford Film Festival jury to choose the winner of the Shine short film competition. The experience was really interesting and very different from the student short film festivals I have attended so far. On the jury was also Carol Mei Barker, the other City of Film PhD student at the University of Bradford. You can find a link to her work here.