Dr Jez Coram

Profile

I am an artist filmmaker and have been a creative practitioner for twenty years. My short films and installations have been shown in galleries and screened in festivals in the UK and Internationally, and I have created video design and large scale projection mapped video and design for theatres including the Bush, Leeds Playhouse and Transform Festival. My early music videos were screened on MTV2 and Kerrang. I completed a practice led PhD in fine art, film and digital cultures at Newcastle University on expanded forms of the essay film, supervised by Profs. Jane and Louise Wilson RA, Dr Fiona Anderson, Dr Ian Mcdonald and Prof. John Bowers. At Newcastle I taught on the BA: Film Practices and BA: Film and Media programmes. For twelve years I worked in the third sector in Leeds as a multimedia designer, research and development manager, and on third sector strategy and development as a senior development worker. During this time my co-produced design, video and project work won two awards and I sat on the board of trustees for Purple Patch Arts.

Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Student Education

Research interests

My scholarship and research is practice-centred and spans Art, Design and Media, and I collaborate on transdisciplinary projects. My practice is focused on the creative and critical function of the essay film and expanded essay form to explore instances of crisis, including their aesthetics, politics and narratives. This is in relation to my interest in crisis, storytelling and digital praxis; hybrid and experimental documentary practices and social change; and sustainability and hybrid digital and non-digital design practices. I am particularly interested in the creative critical praxis of these topics as transformative teaching practice. My practice stems from my personal experiences of being caught up in the Poll Tax Demonstration, aged 10, and working throug the Covid Crisis as a Third Sector Development Worker. I am currently CO-I on the Polycrisis Research Network, funded by the Horizons Institute and my monograph Radical Essaying in Art and Media is due for release in 26/27 by Palgrave Macmillan.

• Crisis and the expanded essay film
• Capitalist Climate futures and the moving image
• Collective storytelling, essaying and film as social change
• Sustainability and Design
• Digital Media, Communication and the Third Sector
• Creative Critical Praxis as Research and Pedagogy

Qualifications

• PhD Fine Art, Film, Digital Cultures
• MA Graphic Arts and Design
• BSc Hons Multimedia Technology

Professional memberships

• Priestley Centre for Climate Futures

Student education

I teach on the BA Digital Media programme and I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Before becoming Deputy Director of Student Education for the School of Media and Communication I was Deputy Programme Lead for the BA Digital Media Programme.