Research Focus Areas

• Visual, material, and popular culture
• Pre-cinema (early photography, panoramas, magic lantern slides and stereoviews)
• Asia-Pacific film (primarily New Zealand, Polynesia, Australia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Japan and South Korea)
• Marginalised cinemas
• Migration and diaspora
• Transnationalism and multiculturalism
• Indigenous cinema
• Digital and documentary film practices
• Film in relation to post-settler societies and film regions of the commonwealth (especially Maori, Samoan and Inuit film)
• Film genres (the musical, comedy, horror, and the fairy tale)
• Consumption and merchandising
• Film and masculinity
• Dystopian and utopian film,
• Film and philosophy,
• British cinema, especially film censorship, genres, and 1930s cinema, post-classical Hollywood cinema
• American cinema before and after the conversion to sound

Short Biography

Ian Conrich is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Vienna, leading masters classes in visual and material culture. Previously, he was Professor of Film and Visual Culture at the University of Derby and Associate Professor and Associate Head of School: Research, at the University of South Australia. Chair of the New Zealand Studies Association since 1997, he was the founder and Director of the Centre for New Zealand Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, and in 2008 he was named Air New Zealand New Zealander of the Year in the UK. The Times Higher Education has described him as "the driving force behind New Zealand Studies in the UK". Ian has been a guest speaker at Harvard University, University of California Berkley, and the Universities of Auckland and Hawai'i. He was the 2005 MacGeorge Visiting Scholar at the University of Melbourne, 2005-6 was a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 2001 a Visiting Scholar at the University of Waikato. 

He has been a jury member of the Hawai'i International Film Festival, guest speaker at the Jogja Asian Film Festival, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the guest curator of major film festivals in Poland and Israel. He has been a guest speaker at the National Film Theatre, the British Museum, Twickenham stadium, the Imperial War Museum, Barts Pathology Museum, the Old Operating Theatre, the Canadian and Australian High Commissions, an advisor to FilmFour and the BBC, a guest on radio and television in Poland, France, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and the UK, and an after-dinner speaker at the New Zealand High Commission, London. For 2011-2014, he was the curator of a series of exhibitions, Easter Island, Myths, and Popular Culture, which travelled to the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, Marton, the Kon-Tiki Musuem, Oslo, and the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney.

Major Publications

• The Cinema of Sri Lanka: South Asian Film in Texts and Contexts (2018, co-author)
• Islands and Film (2018, co-editor)
• John Carpenter Interviews (2018, co-editor)
• Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature: The Body in Parts (2017, co-author)
• Rapa Nui – Easter Island: Cultural and Historical Perspectives (2016, co-editor)
• Moai Culture: Easter Island and Popular Imagination (2014, author)
• Small Nations, Big Neighbours: New Zealand & Canada (2011, co-editor)
• New Zealand, France and the Pacific (2011, co-editor)
• Easter Island, Myths, and Popular Culture (2011, author)
• Studies in Travel Writing (2010, co-editor of a special issue on New Zealand)
• Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema (2009, editor)
• The Cinema of New Zealand (2009, in Polish, editor)
• Studies in New Zealand Cinema (2009, author)
• Harvard Review (2008, guest editor of a special issue on New Zealand literature)
• Asian Cinema (2008, co-editor of a special issue on Sri Lankan Cinema)
• New Zealand Film - A Guide (2008, in Polish, author)
• Contemporary New Zealand Cinema (2008, co-editor)
• New Zealand Filmmakers (2007, co-editor)
• Film's Musical Moments (2006, co-editor)
• Journal of British Cinema and Television (2006, co-editor of a special issue on The Cinema-going Experience)
• Post Script (2005, guest editor of a special double issue on Australian and New Zealand Cinema)
• The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror (2005, co-editor)
• Journal of Popular British Cinema (2000, co-editor of a special issue on Forbidden British Cinema)
• New Zealand - A Pastoral Paradise? (2000, co-editor)

Current Projects

• Islands and Film
• Pacific Histories on Film
• Images of the Maori 
• Steampunk Film and Culture

Keynote Speaker, Plenary Speaker, and Invited Address

10-12/6/15 - ‘Hammer Hybrids: Genre Mutation and 1970s Horror Cinema’, for the conference Les studios Hammer: laboratoire de l’horreur moderne, at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France (opening keynote)

26-27/11/12 - 'Regionalism, Identity and Indigenous Cinema', for Cinemas of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, University of La Reunion. (keynote speaker)

6-9/11/12 - 'Beyond Conflict in Sri Lankan Cinema', for Mediating Peace: Reconciliation through Art, Music and Film, 4th International Conference on Peace and Reconciliation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (Guest speaker)

28/10/11 - 'An Infected Population: Zombie Culture and the Modern Monstrous', keynote address to the Zombosium at the University of Winchester.

10-11/2/11 - 'Cross-Cultural relationships in Asia-New Zealand Films', presented at the Asian Exposure: East Asian Cinema in a Global Context conference, Coventry University. (keynote speaker)

13-14/11/09 - The Adult Film Musical: Excess, Sex, and Exploitation', presented at the Talking "Dirty": Sex and the Cinema conference, University of Leeds. (keynote speaker)

22-25/9/09 - Invited member of a plenary on New Zealand and Australian Studies in Europe at the EASA conference, University of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca.

4-6/9/08 - 'Leave All Fair: Capturing the Story of Two Lives', presented at The Katherine Mansfield Centenary Conference, Birkbeck, University of London. (keynote speaker)

7/9/07 - 'Representations of the Maori and Pacific Islanders in New Zealand Short Film', presented at the Origins: First Nations Theatre From Around the World symposium, Australian High Commission, London. (invited address)

20/4/07 - 'New Zealand Studies in the UK', presented at the ANZLAG symposium, Australian High Commission, London. (invited address)

2-3/9/06 - 'A Fragile World: Documenting Bangladesh's Jumana River People in Sand and Water', presented at the Water and the Indian Worlds conference, Jonzac, France. (keynote speaker)

22/10/05 - Invited guest speaker for a round table discussion on New Zealand and France: 60 Years of Diplomatic Relations, with panelists including former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard and Don McKinnon, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. Salle Jean Despos, St Tropez, France.

12/9/05 - 'The Screen Fictionalisation of a National Sport: The Myth of New Zealand Rugby', for a conference at Twickenham to commemorate 100 years of All Blacks rugby. (invited address)

24/6/05 - 'A Foreign Engagement: New Zealand Cinema and the Impact of the American Action Genre', presented at the 'New Zealand and Australian Studies Seminar', Université de la Rochelle, France. (invited address)

23-24/4/05 - 'Friend or Foe: Americans and New Zealanders in the Second World War as Depicted in New Zealand Film', presented at the Digger and the Larrikin Live On conference, Imperial War Museum, London (invited address).

13-14/2/04 - 'Cronenberg, Canadian Cinema, and Neo-Horror Film Culture', presented at the Canada and the Moving Image conference, Centre for Canadian Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, and the Canadian High Commission. (invited address)

1/6/03 - 'The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Film Dramatisations of Miscarriages of Justice', keynote address to the Cinema as Historical Court conference, University of Haifa, Israel (keynote speaker; visit cancelled).

15/4/00 - ‘Postcolonial Transition in the Pacific Region: Cinema, Identity and the Challenge to Dominant Mythologies’, presented at the Postcolonialism and Cinema conference, at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. (invited address)

30/05/96 - 'Escaping on the Road From Nowhere: Open Spaces and the Road Movie in 'God's Own Country'', presented at the New Zealand Culture conference, organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, held at New Zealand House. (invited address)

07/05/94 - 'The Object Victorious: Freddy Krueger, Jean Baudrillard and Transgression in the A Nightmare on Elm Street Films', presented at the Gothic conference, Manchester Metropolitan University. (invited address)