Dr Nariman Massoumi
PhD(Bristol), MA(Bristol), BSc(Lond.)
Current positions
Associate Professor in Film
Department of Film and Television
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
I am a documentary filmmaker and pracite-as-researcher with a specialist focus on British-Iranian biographical histories of oil, colonialism and migration. My practice-as-research PhD explored documentary autobiograhical family film ("domestic ethnography") within a British-Iranian diasporic context. Since then my work has developed throughds interdisciplinary collaborative film projects that challenge perceptions and representations of refugees and migrants around questions of envoicement. More recently, I have focused on the history of British-Iranian oil industrial films of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (forerunner to BP), resulting in the short film Pouring Water on Troubled Oil (2023) which reimagines the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's journey through Iran in 1951 on an assignment to write an oil company publicity film. I was previously an Associate Editor at Screenworks, the peer-reviewed journal of film and screen practice research, and have a continued interest in the sustainability of practice-as-research in the academy.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Changing the Modern Slavery Narrative
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
The proposed project seeks to provide ‘proof of concept’ with regard to the ERC-funded Advanced Award Modern Marronage? The Pursuit and Practice of Freedom in the Contemporary World (MMPPF) by…Managing organisational unit
Dates
01/03/2023 to 28/02/2024
Memory work and Migration: Exploring the body as a living archive of intergenerational memories
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
How does a perspective on the body as a living archive of intergenerational memories inform approaches to migration and memory? How can an embodied and creative approach to ‘memory work’…Managing organisational unit
Dates
31/01/2023
Subject to Scrutiny
Principal Investigator
Description
Building on a collaborative film research project with asylum seekers and refugees with Bristol Refugee Rights scrutinising the effects of asylum policy, this follow-on project aims to produce a film…Managing organisational unit
Department of Film and TelevisionDates
05/01/2021 to 31/03/2021
Scrutinising the immigration system through collaborative filmmaking with refugees and asylum seekers
Principal Investigator
Description
This research project aims to move beyond the narrowly conceived humanitarian depictions of refugees personal struggles and emotional appeals for public sympathy, and will instead use collaborative filmmaking as a…Managing organisational unit
Department of Film and TelevisionDates
06/01/2020 to 31/07/2020
Thesis supervisions
Publications
Selected publications
13/04/2023Pouring Water on Troubled Oil
Dear Home Office
How do you see me?
Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness
Recent publications
17/02/2025The Family Idyll, Exclusion and Ideology in Persepolis
Rethinking Migration
Transformative Representations - Section Introduction
Rethinking Migration
On seeing crossings: Dover/Calais
Design and Culture
Filmmaking from my father's memories
Pouring Water on Troubled Oil
Related people
Dr Florian Scheding
Associate Professor in Music and Migration
Department of Music
Dr Katie Bales
Associate Professor
University of Bristol Law School
Professor Bridget Anderson
Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
Dr Juan Zhang
Senior Lecturer
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Dr Travis Van Isacker
Senior Research Associate
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies