Dr Angela Piccini - Lecturer in Screen Studies - Head of Education
I am an RCUK Academic Fellow, Lecturer in Screen Studies and Head of Education in Drama. My work investigates place and visual culture and the dialogue between fact and fiction produced by the documentary impulse. Specifically, I continue to be interested in the ways in which the materialized traces of the past circulate through contemporary and historic screen practices. These span ethnographic and archaeological film, factual television, experimental video and social media.
Following a BA in English / Art History from University of British Columbia (1990) and an MA and PhD in Archaeology (Celtic Constructs: Heritage Media, Archaeological Knowledge and the Politics of Consumption in 1990s Britain, 1999) from University of Sheffield, I worked on geographies of heritage at University of Wales, Swansea (1995-97) and then produced guidebooks and commissioned photography as Publications Officer for Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments (1997-2000). My focus on archaeo-historic media and the event of place led to my taking up a post-doctoral research post for the AHRB-funded PARIP (Practice as Research in Performance) project, led by Professor Baz Kershaw (2001-05). From 2005-10 I am an RCUK Academic Fellow associated with the Place & Space university research theme, led by Professor Martin White.
Research Students
I currently co-supervise Greg Bailey (In Transit, 2006 ), whose research focuses on the social impacts of archaeology in the public sphere. This practice-based PhD, based in Archaeology & Anthropology and in Drama, develops Greg’s research from his MA in Archaeology for Screen Media to investigate modes of televisual archaeology and experimental filmmaking. Greg is concerned with the means by which archaeologists can more effectively communicate the political and social impact of archaeology in contemporary culture through the moving image. I welcome the opportunity to work with research students on any of the themes above, to focus on questions of the performative production of place and space through a wide range of documentary forms.
Current Projects and Outcomes
In 2009, I was Visiting Scholar at University of British Columbia, located in the Centre for Cinema Studies and the Anthropology Department. I am researching the ways in which media produced alongside the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games harnesses material culture and place in the production of civic identities. Outcomes include video documentation of the Musqueam-UBC Archaeology Field School, for use by the Musqueam community (one of the Four Host First Nations) in publicity and education.
From 2007-09 I collaborated with Bristol’s Institute for Learning and Research Technology and Watershed Media Centre on the JISC-funded STARS (Semantic Web Tools for Screen Arts Research) project.
From 2006-08 I was principal investigator on an AHRC Landscape and Environment Network (with UWE and Universityof Aberystwyth) exploring transdisciplinary and mixed-mode research approaches to site, with a specific focus on the performative processes of emptying.Selected publications
2009, ‘Bonekickers: Informing, Educating, Entertaining?’, in Proceedings of the Archaeology and Film Conference, Brussels: Kineon, with Greg Bailey and Don Henson.
2009, ‘Of fevered archives and the quest for total documentation', in L Allegue Fuschini, S Jones, B Kershaw and A Piccini (eds) Practice-as-Research: in Performance and Screen Media. London : Palgrave Macmillan.
2009, Practice-as-Research: in Performance and Screen Media , co-edited with L Allegue Fuschini, S Jones and B Kershaw, London : Palgrave Macmillan.
2009, Beachley-Aust , 14-minute single-channel video in response to Biggs, I. 2007 , In Debateable Lands Vol 1, Wild Conversations Press, for In Debateable Lands Vol 2, Wild Conversations Press.
In press, ‘Locating grid technologies', Digital Humanities Quarterly (special edition edited by Tobias Blanke and Stuart Dunn)
2009, Contemporary Archaeologies: Excavating Now , co-edited with C Holtorf, Bern : Peter Lang
2009, ‘Guttersnipe: a micro road movie', in C Holtorf and A Piccini (eds) Contemporary Archaeologies: Excavating Now . Bern : Peter Lang
2008. Flotsam and Jetsam 1, 3-minute video and sound installation by Jem Noble and Angela Piccini for Avonmouth-Severn Beach symposium, Univesity of Bristol.
2008 Flotsam and Jetsam 2, 10-minute video and sound installation by Jem Noble and Angela Piccini for Performativity and Emptiness Conference, University of Bristol.
2008 Walk the Line , 14-minute single-channel video and performance presented at LAND 2, a colloquium on Creative and Walking, University of Leeds, 7 March; Architectures of Emptiness , University of Minnesota, 18 April.
2007. Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory , co-edited with L McAtackney and M. Palus, Oxford : Archaeopress.
2007. ‘Faking it: why the truth is so important for TV archaeology' In T Clack and M Brittain (eds) Archaeology and the Media . Walnut Creek : Left Coast Press.
2007. Surfacing , 10-minute single-channel video, presented at Mynydd Epynt symposium, University of Bristol .
2007. A Survey of Heritage Television Viewing Figures , Council for British Archaeology Research Bulletin 1.
2006. TV Heritage Counts Report commissioned by English Heritage, for Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
2003-04. Guttersnipe , 14-minute single-channel video and performance presented at CHAT 2003 ( University of Bristol ), TAG 2003 ( University of Wales Lampeter ), Pixelache 2004 ( Helsinki , Finland ), Orange Ashton Court Festival 2004 ( Bristol ).
2003. An historiographic perspective on practice as research. Studies in Theatre and Performance 23 (3).
2003. 'Practice as research in performance: from epistemology to evaluation', Digital Creativity , 15: 86-92 (with Baz Kershaw)
Pre-2000
1999. (with R Pyrs Gruffudd & David Herbert). ''Good to think”: social constructions of Celtic heritage in Wales ', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 17: 705-721
1999. (with R Pyrs Gruffudd & David T Herbert) 'In search of Wales : travel writing and narratives of difference, 1918-50', Journal of Historical Geography 26(4)
1999. 'Wargames and Wendy houses: Open-air reconstructions of prehistoric life', in N. Merriman (ed.), Making Early Histories in Museums , Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 151-172.
1999. 'Welsh Celts or Celtic Wales ? The production and consumption of a (not so) different Iron Age', in B Bevan (ed.), Northern Exposure , Leicester: Leicester University Press, pp. 51-63
1998. (with R Pyrs Gruffudd & David Herbert) 'Learning to think the past: heritage, identity and state education in Wales ', International Journal of Heritage Studies 4: 154-167