Critical Studies in Television Workshop:
100 Years of Women at the BBC
Friday 7th May 2021, 1pm BST
About

Mary Malcolm
Watch the event here: Youtube ISR Playlist
In 2022, one hundred years will have passed since the formation of the British Broadcasting Company, later to become the pioneering public service broadcaster best known as the BBC.
The BBC has had an enormous impact on television culture in its first one hundred years, providing a blueprint for independent publicly funded broadcasting. The BBC has been a testing ground for new developments in broadcasting technology and infrastructure. It has provided space for programme makers to innovate new forms, as well as to display national traditions – and invent some of its own. It has offered important public space to playwrights, scientists, politicians, musicians, historians, performers and many more thinkers to enlighten, to amuse, to infuriate. Its formative mantra of ‘inform, educate, entertain’ has undergone many modifications over time but these aims remain core to its contemporary ethos. Its goal of providing impartial and balanced news, current affairs and analysis has been tested numerous times in divisive political climates. It was born of a patriarchal, colonialist and elitist view of cultural uplift. How has it changed over its long life?
This workshop will explore one specific aspect of the BBC’s history: its relationship with women.
Characterised from early in its life as ‘Auntie’, the BBC itself has been gendered female in the cultural consciousness. But this belies an historically male-dominated institution in which women have often had to fight for their rights to be heard. Recent controversies around equal pay, misogynistic abuse towards BBC personalities and a lack of female representation at the top of the corporation suggest that the institution has far to go in matters of gender equality.
The workshop will present fresh and innovative work-in-progress research on women at the BBC. Our presentations will explore the careers of some pioneering female workers at the BBC. The workshop aims to shed fresh light on influential figures such as Grace Wyndham Goldie and Jill Craigie; to draw attention to careers that are often overlooked – such as gramophone operators or production designers; to re-examine forgotten on-screen personalities; and to consider women’s contributions to prestigious BBC strands such as Play for Today. We will also think about the tools we use to explore women’s television history, with a panel that focuses on the pros and cons of using interviews as a research method for historical studies.
This event takes place Online (a secure link will be distributed following registration).
Programme
Date: Friday 7th May 2021
Venue: Online (a secure link will be distributed following registration).
Programme: (schedule subject to change)
Time | Session |
1.00pm | Entry to online conference waiting room (zoom is launched so audience can start gathering) |
1.15pm | Welcome Professor Jo Crotty, ISR Director, Edge Hill University |
1.30pm | Panel 1: Women and the BBC working papers Chair: Vicky Ball Respondent: Janet McCabe This session will comprise 10 – 15 minute working papers plus room for discussion. – Kevin Geddes – Mary Irwin – Hollie Price – Emma Sandon – Kate Murphy |
3.45pm | Break (15mins) |
4.00pm | Panel 2: Doing women’s TV history via interviews Chair: Vanessa Jackson Respondent: Elke Weissmann This session will comprise 10 minute papers plus a panel discussion on the interview as a methodology for women’s media history. – Tom May – Jane Barnwell – Kristyn Gorton + Mark Helsby |
5.30pm | Summary of the day Hannah Andrews |
5.45pm | Close |
Speakers
Kevin Geddes
Emma Sandon
Hollie Price
Kate Murphy
Mary Irwin
Tom May
Jane Barnwell
Kristyn Gorton
Mark Helsby
Registration
Date: Friday 7th May 2021, 1pm BST
Venue: Online (a secure link will be distributed following registration).
Registration: this event is FREE but please click here to book your place.