This blog considers the psychological conundrum of ageing within the academic workplace, offering an autoethnographic approach, reflecting upon passing moments from film and TV, that are both treasured, and engrained in the author’s psyche. “Drive Louise! Drive!

I initially started writing this blog on Tuesday (we’ll certainly remember, remember, this 5 ^th of November).  Currently living in America (although not for much longer – I’m one of the lucky ones) and a TV scholar, I watched the television advertising campaign for the presidential race with equal parts fascination and horror. I am sure that, across the globe, everyone is still reeling from the shock of the results.

Siegfried Kracauer in Theory of Film describes the strangely transporting effect of memory while watching old documentary films containing recognisable childhood objects.

‘The ghosts of the Confederacy will not die.’- Colonel Anderson (Kurt Smallwood); 1.1   One of the hallmarks of Western films—here meant in the sense of ‘Spaghetti’ rather than ‘the West’ —is the idea of the cowboy/gunslinger riding off into the sunset, either alone or possibly with one or more of his fellows.

Spanish television programming has undergone a major shift in recent months, with the access-to-prime-time slot becoming the new battlefield for viewership, attracting the attention of media and audiences alike.

Production Managers (PMs) in television production are mainly female, and as in other industries this ‘feminised’ role is typically afforded lower status than those predominantly performed by men. In our recent study, we explored the experiences of PMs in the UK industry, a group of workers who are often rendered invisible, both within the industry and in television scholarship.

“Chilling,” “a dark delight,” “magnificent,” “triumphant,” and “explosive” are all words that have been used to describe the British police crime thriller Happy Valley.[1]  First screened in 2014, it reached an audience of over 8 million and became a hit with critics and the audience alike.

Backstage and background While attending the 2024 CST Conference: Sustainability and Television, which ran from 24 ^th June to the 4 ^th of July, the question of representation of British Asians in relation to equality and diversity arose. Equality and diversity are further elements of the UN’s sustainable development goals.

In this blog, I offer an autoethnographical account of what it means for TV scholars to take part in the conference continuum, which I argue is both familiar and strange in every iteration. Whether you are an ardent follower of certain large-scale conferences, or a serial “dipper in” to a plethora of small-scale events, you might not realise how to “find your fit” – when you turn up, dust off your boots, and reach for the microphone or

Disclaimer: This blog post is derived from the conference presentation titled “(A)Sexual or (De)Sexual (Re)presentations of Childhood: Tracing Split Attraction Model in Big Mouth (2017-2024)”, at the Queer Children’s Film and Television Symposium 2024.