Professor Robert Shail

Director of Research Leeds Beckett University

  • Leeds West Yorkshire

Professor Robert Shail's research interests cover postwar British cinema, gender identity in film, comics books, and children's cinema.

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Biography

Robert Shail is Director of Research at Leeds Beckett University's Leeds School of Arts where he leads on film, music, performing arts and creative technologies.

Robert’s research has focused mainly on the history of post-war British cinema with a particular interest in the work of key directors and on stardom. His book on Welsh star/producer Stanley Baker was supported by an AHRC award and his book on director Tony Richardson was published by Manchester University Press. More recent work has focused on children's media including an essay on Beryl the Peril and completion of his study of the Children's Film Foundation. This work has fed into current debates on the future of children's media in the UK.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Motion Pictures and Film
Writing and Editing

Areas of Expertise

Children's Film Foundation
British Cinema
Film Art
Critical Practice
Children's Media

Education

University of the West of England

M.A.

English Lit, American Studies, Film Studies

University of the West of England

B.A.

English Lit, American Studies, Film Studies

University of Exeter

Ph.D.

Film and Visual Culture

Languages

  • English

Media Appearances

Academics to publish book on 'the diversity' of Jason Statham

The Telegraph  online

2018-01-16

Professor Robert Shail, one of the book's editors, said: "The contributors have each given Statham's career a different 'voice'. By focusing on his diversity, the book analyses his personality across a variety of media platforms."

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Leeds celebrates its film pioneer

Yorkshire Post  online

2017-10-24

Professor Robert Shail, from Leeds Beckett University, says Le Prince holds a unique place in the story of film, albeit one that’s somewhat overlooked. “When it comes to the question of who invented cinema and who gets the bragging rights the nearest anybody can get is him – Louis Le Prince.”

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Why Yorkshire is rapidly becoming the most popular filming location in the UK

iNews  online

2017-10-19

“The real selling point of Leeds is that there is such a wide variety of attractive and exciting locations within a compact area,” explains Robert Shail, Professor of Film at Leeds Beckett University.

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Articles

Censorship in Context: The British Board of film Classification, the Children’s Film Foundation and Terry on the Fence (1986)

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

2020

For over thirty years the Children’s Film Foundation (CFF) produced a variety of shorts, travelogues, serials and features which were shown at a network of Saturday morning cinema clubs all over the UK and beyond. At their peak in the 1960s and 1970s they reached an audience in excess of half a million per week.

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Anarchy in the UK: reading Beryl the Peril via historic conceptions of childhood

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

2014

Much work within the field of childhood studies has focused on the social discourses through which childhood is understood. This article draws on this work in developing a critical framework for considering the appeal of Beryl the Peril.

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A Film from Wales: Welsh Identity and The Children's Film Foundation

The Welsh History Review

2016

This article examines the work of the Children's Film Foundation (CFF) in Wales. The CFF was founded in 1951 to make films for children and supported a network of Saturday morning cinema clubs which were popular until the 1970s.

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