James Graham is Director of Programmes for Writing and Promotion in the Media Department.
James teaches broadly across media and communications and researches in the fields of postcolonial media and literary studies. He is the convenor of the Promotional Cultures Research Cluster and has supervised two PhDs to completion in this area. Prior to taking on the role of Director of Programmes he led the BA Advertising, PR and Branding programme, taking it through two succesful reviews and overseeing its expansion and delivery internationally in London, Dubai, Mauritius and Vietnam.
In the role of Director of Programmes for Writing and Promotion James provides leadership in curriculum development, teaching and learning and quality assurance for BA English, BA Media and Cultural Studies, BA Journalism and Communication, BA Journalism and Creative Writing, BA Advertising, PR and Branding, MSc Media Management, MSc Digital Journalism and MA Novel Writing. James is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was awarded 'Academic Staff Member of the Year' in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at the 2018 Middlesex Student's Union Student-Led Teaching Awards.
Qualifications
BA, MA, PhD, PGCertHE
I have developed and taught a wide range of modules in the Media department at Middlesex, including: Brands, Media and Society; Visual Cultures; Writing the City; Advertising and PR in Context; Practices of Promotional Culture; Issues in Promotional Culture; Media for Advertising and Marketing; Marketing: PR and Promotion; Methods and Issues in Developing Research Projects; Independent Project.
As well as leading the delivery of undergraduate independent project/undegraduate dissertation modules, I supervise independent projects at postgraduate levels, with three PhD completions:
Adrian Banting, ‘Forbidden Love in Muslim Britain’
Maitrayee Basu, ‘Assembling Authority: the Rise of Literary Journalism in India’
Giannina Warren, 'Cultural Intermediaries and Place Branding: A Framework for Understanding Their Impact and Influence'
I am currently supervising a Creative Writing PhD: Novel title: 'Good Girl, #BadGirl'; Thesis title: 'The narrative treatment of African female characters in the writing of Charles Mungoshi'
I would welcome hearing from those interested in pursuing projects at Middlesex in the areas of: Promotional Culture; Postcolonial Media and Literary Studies; the work of Teju Cole, Ivan Vladislavić and Yvonne Vera.
My research background is in postcolonial media and literary studies. I am particularly interested in the intersection of promotional and postcolonial cultures and am currently working on a project that investigates the various ways in which postcolonial writers and visual artists use Instagram - as a space of artistic experimentation and public engagement, but also of branding and promotion.
This work builds on the 2018 Instagram Conference hosted at Middlesex, for which I am currently co-editing a special issue of Social Media+Society, and the 2015 conference on Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries, which led to the publication of a book collection I also co-edited: https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books/10.16997/book4/
Previously I collaborated on a project with colleagues from the Universities of Warwick, University College Dublin, Durham, York and Sussex which aimed at understanding and critiquing the spectacular re-emergence of 'world literature' in the Anglo-American academy. I have lectured, given conference papers and published extensivelly on this and related subjects, including the representation of land and landscape in southern African writing; the work of Ivan Vladislavić and Yvonne Vera; the aesthetics of postcolonial urbanism; and the rise and fall of 'multiculturalism' in British film and fiction of the New Labour Years.
Caliandro, Alessandro and Graham, James (2020) Studying Instagram beyond selfies. Social Media + Society , 6 (2). pp. 1-7. ISSN 2056-3051
Graham, James (2017) The cultural economy of auteurship in independent publishing: the symbolic success of the photobook Ponte City. In: Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries. Graham, James and Gandini, Alessandro , eds. University of Westminster Press, London, pp. 69-85. ISBN 9781911534280
Graham, James and Gandini, Alessandro , eds. (2017) Collaborative production in the creative industries. University of Westminster Press, London. ISBN 9781911534280
Graham, James and Gandini, Alessandro (2017) Introduction: collaborative production in the creative industries. In: Collaborative Production in the Creative Industries. Graham, James and Gandini, Alessandro , eds. University of Westminster Press, London, pp. 1-14. ISBN 9781911534280
Graham, James (2017) "A country with land but no habitat": women, violent accumulation and negative-value in Yvonne Verau2019s The Stone Virgins. Journal of Postcolonial Writing , 53 (3). pp. 355-366. ISSN 1744-9855
