Dr Jonny Smith

Profile

I am a University Teaching Fellow in Film Studies in the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. I teach Film history, theory and analysis to undergraduates and postgraduates on our Film Studies programmes. Previously I have taught Film Studies at the University of Manchester with modules on British Cinema, Hollywood, post-war World Cinema and Early Film History. In 2022 I completed a PhD in Film Studies at the University of Manchester with my thesis titled Nasty, Brutish & Tall: The Utilisation & Representation of Brutalist Architecture in British Cinema Post 1970. I have continued to pursure this interest in British Cinema, architecture and placemaking through various research outputs, including book chapters, journal articles and conference papers.

Responsibilities

• Lecturer in Film Studies

Research interests

My research and publication focus has been largely on British Cinema, with a particular focus on post-war social realism, including the British New Wave, and representations of place, regionality and ubranism. I have upcoming book chapters on the relationship between masculinity and architecture, representations of post-warr modernist London and the director Lindsay Anderson. I have also published in The Journal of British Cinema and Television with an article on the use of Brutalist architecture in the 1973 thriller The Offence. In late 2025 I will publish my monograph Brutalist Architecture in British Cinema with Bloosmbury. 

Beyond these academic outputs I have presented at a range of international conferences and, most recently, have been involved in a public engagement for the the University of Salford and The Working-Class Movement Library as part of their work on class, architecture and post-war redvelopment. 

Publications
Modernist Magazine – Issue 38 ‘Killer’ (2021)
- Defenestration, Vigilantes & a Whack in the Yarbles: A Short History of Violent Modernism in British Cinema

Open Screen Journal (Summer 2022)
- Book Review of The Encyclopaedia of British Film, Fifth edition (Brian McFarlane and Anthony Slide)

The Journal of British Cinema and Television, Volume 20, Issue 1, 2023 
- ‘Something Like the Truth’: Confronting the Honesty of Brutalism & Post-War Planning in The Offence (1973) 

Forthcoming:

Book Chapter: Beyond the Council Estate (EUP)
- ‘Tough Blokes, Tough Buildings’: The Significance of Brutalist Architecture in Constructing Working-Class Masculinity in Post-War British Cinema 

Book Chapter: Cinematic Starchitecture: The Celebrity Status of Architectural Structures in Film (EUP) 
-  ‘Concrete Stardom’: The Significance of Brutalism in Establishing Twenty-First Century Cinematic London

Book Chapter: ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson (Edinburgh University Press)
- Usual Stimulating Awful Marvellous Northern Urban Landscape’: Authorship, Class & Placemaking in Lindsay Anderson’s 1960s Filmography

Monograph: Brutalist Architecture in British Cinema (Bloomsbury – due late 2025)

Professional memberships

• British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS)

Student education

I currently teach Film and Screen Studies, and Audio Visual Culture.