Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice

Dr Alan Grossman (Co-Director)

Lecturer in Media Production and Senior Researcher

MSc Clinical Psychology (University of London)
PhD Critical and Cultural Theory (University of Wales, Cardiff)

P: +353-1-4027129
E: alan.grossman@dit.ie
Campus: Aungier Street

Alan Grossman is a Lecturer in Media Production/Senior Researcher and Co-director of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice. He represents CTMP on the Centre-led Forum on Migration and Communications (FOMACS) public media project producing film, photographic, digital stortelling, radio, animation and print stories on the topic of immigration in Ireland (see http://www.fomacs.org). He was the recipient of a two-year Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (2001-3) – the first award of its kind for practice-based research at the postdoctoral level in Ireland. He has a longstanding visual ethnographic involvement with the cultural politics of identity, migration and diasporic formations across infra and transnational contexts; from the perspective of the minority Welsh-language resistance movement in Wales, to Kurdish refugee music in Scotland in the form of a short performative documentary film Silent Song (2000, UK, 15 mins), to his co-directed ethnographic film projects Here To Stay (2006, Ireland, 72 mins) and Promise and Unrest (2010, Philippines, 95 min), both of which received completion funding from the Irish Film Board, and combine to address questions of migrant agency, gender, long-distance motherhood and the expanding material outcomes of remittance payments. He has published in numerous refereed journals including Space and Culture and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, while participating in international conferences across the fields of documentary practice and media and cultural studies. He is co-editor with Aine O’Brien of Projecting Migration: Transcultural Documentary Practice (2007, Wallflower Press), a combined book/DVD-ROM engaged with questions of mobility and displacement through the analytical prism of creative practice. He is guest co-editor of a special issue on the cultural politics of representation in the Journal of Media Practice 9(2), 2008, and is currently completing a feature-length FOMACS documentary film with animated sequences titled Union, Ink and Paper about an Irish migrant labour trade union activist.

Doctoral supervision areas include both practice-based projects (digital video and photography) and written scholarship across the subject areas of race and ethnicity; migrant representation and participation in Irish radio; narrating migration through digital storytelling; the globalization of healthcare education; globalisation, photography and the labouring body; return and undocumented migration; citizenship, urban space and grassroots social activism; the transnational migrant family home; sport, youth and migration; the design of online stock image banks; and sustainability and the food supply chain. He has supervised numerous theses on the BA in Photography and Digital Imaging, DIT as well as MA theses in Journalism. He has also taught on a cross-institutional postgraduate course titled 'Transcultural Practice and Visual Culture(s), available to doctoral students in CTMP and the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, and continues to contribute to this reconfigured course titled ‘Visual Culture: From Modernity to Diversity’.

He is external examiner (2009-12) of the MA in Radio and Television, Centre for Media Studies at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Selected Publications

Books:

2007
Projecting Migration: Transcultural Documentary Practice (with DVD). Alan Grossman and Aine O’Brien (eds). London: Wallflower Press.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

2010
'Transnational Scenographies of Care: The Performance of Migrant Identities in Ethnographic Film', in McKeogh, C. and O'Donnell, D. (eds) Documentary in a Changing World (working title), Cork University Press (forthcoming).

'Voice, Listening and Social Justice: A Multimediated Engagament with New Immigrant Communities and Publics in Ireland', Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture (forthcoming).

2008
Grossman, A, McLaughlin, C, O'Brien, A (guest editors), Journal of Media Practice (9.2), Intellect Books.

2006
‘Kurdish Lyrical Protest: The Terrain of Acoustic Migration’. Special Issue on Music and Migration, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32 (2): 271-289.

2001
'Writing the Visual: An Interview with Larry Taylor and Maeve Hickey'. Migration and Location: Visual Media Research Conference Catalogue Essay.

2000
‘Notations: Framing the Kurdish Voice in Exile’. Two Nine Two: Essays in Visual Culture, Vol 2: 7–18.

‘The Welshification of Homely Spaces: Tracing the Uncanny’, Space and Culture (Virtual Space and Organizational Networks), No. 4/5: 223–37.

‘Stereotypes and Projective Mechanisms: Forging Links between Psyche and Culture’, in Emig, Reiner (ed.) Stereotypes in Contemporary Anglo-German Relations. Manchester: Macmillan Press, pp. 31–44.

‘On the Borderlands’, Edinburgh Review 103: ‘The End of the Nation’, pp. 55-67.

1996
‘Nodiadau o’r Ffin’ (‘Writing Across the Line’), Tu Chwith, Vol 5: 15 -23. Trans. Gwenan M. Roberts.

1993
'Introduction: Discourse, Selfhood and the Lifespan', in Coupland, Nikolas and Nussbaum, Jon (eds), Discourse and Lifespan Identity, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, v–xxvi.

Selected Films, Festivals, Screenings and Awards

Promise and Unrest (2010, Philippines/Ireland, 95 mins. Co-directed with Aine O'Brien):

Screenings

2010
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Real to Reel Section, Cineworld, Premiere Screening, Feb 19.

Here To Stay (2006, Ireland, 72 mins. Co-directed Documentary with Aine O’Brien):

2009
Seeing Cultures: Wellington Ethnographic Cinema 2009, University of Victoria, New Zealand (Travelling Gottingen International Ethnographic Film Festival).

2008
Delhi International Ethnographic Film Festival, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, India.

Anthropological Film, Video and New Media Festival, European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), University of Ljublana, Slovenia.

'Bridges to Utopia' Conference, Utopian Studies Society, Ralahine Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland.

RTE Television Broadcast (Here To Stay, 52 min).

Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany.

World Witness Human Rights Film Festival, Limerick, Ireland.

2007
Multicultural Broadcast Media Award (MAMA).

Green Cuts Film Festival, Berlin (Reel Ireland).

Waterford Film Festival, Ireland.

9th Cinemanila International Film Festival, Philippines.

GAZE, Dublin International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Irish Film Institute.

Guth Gafa Documentary Film Festival, Donegal, Ireland.

‘Human Rights Nights’ (Migration and Diversity). International Film Festival, Bologna, Italy.

San Francisco Irish Film Festival, USA.

University of Ulster, Coleraine, Centre for Media Studies Research Seminar Series.

University of Limerick, Ireland, Tiger’s Eye Film Festival.

NUI Maynooth, Ireland, Department of Sociology Seminar Series.

Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland, School of Nursing.

2006
Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival, Irish Film Institute, Dublin.

Queens University, Belfast, Department of Film Studies Seminar Series.

Silent Song (2000, UK, 15 mins, Co-directed Documentary with Aine O’Brien):

2008
2MOVE: IRELAND Exhibition on Migratory Aesthetics, Film Screening, Silent Song, Belfast Exposed Photography and Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland.

2004
Cinema and Migration Film Festival, University of Bergamo, Italy.

2003
Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, Tapei. ‘Stories of Migration’ Section.

2001
Arab Mediterranean Film Festival, Edinburgh Filmhouse, UK.

UK Refugee Week, Edinburgh Filmhouse, UK.

Galway Film Fleadh, Ireland.

Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival, Irish Film Institute, Dublin.

2000
Turkish Film Festival, London, UK.

Murphy’s Cork Film Festival, Ireland.

University of Wales, Swansea, ‘Writing Diasporas: Axial Writers, Plural Literacies, Transnational Imagination’ Conference.

The Memory Box (2007, Ireland, 6-min, Co-Producer, Documation, FOMACS production):

2009
Culture Ireland Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania.

2008
Galway Film Fleadh, New Irish Short Animation Section, Ireland.

Education Programme, Irish Film Institute.

World Witness Film Festival, Limerick, Ireland.

2007
Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival, Irish Film Institute (Winner of Best Irish Short Audience Award).

Junior Galway Film Fleadh, Ireland.

Waterford African Film Festival, Ireland.

Team Spirit (2008, Ireland, 5-min, Co-Producer, Documation, FOMACS production):

2009
ICCL 'Human Rights' screening, Cork Film Festival.

Galway Junior Film Fleadh, Ireland.

Culture Ireland Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania.

Love Music Hate Racism Launch, Dublin.

2008
Shortlisted, ICCL Human Rights Film Competition, Ireland.

New Beginnings (2009, Ireland, 6-min, Co-Producer, Documation, FOMACS production):

2010
Seattle Children's Film Festival, USA.

2009
Galway Junior Film Fleadh, Ireland.

Culture Ireland Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania.

The Richness of Change (2008, Ireland, 7x1-min Shorts, Co-Producer, FOMACS production):

2008
Broadcast on RTE (7-11 April), Intercultural Week.

Stranger Than Fiction Documentary Film Festival, Irish Film Institute, Dublin, Short Film Selection.

Living in Direct Provision - 9 Stories (9x3-5min Digital Stories, Co-producer, FOMACS Production):

2009

Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival, Gortahork, Donegal, Ireland.

Selected Conference Papers and Seminars

2009
'Multi-Mediated Engagements with New Publics and Communities', Panel Convenor, Glocal Imaginaries: Writing/Migration/Place Conference, Lancaster University and Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK.

'Ethnographic Film and the Translocalised Expression of Migrant Sociopolitical Agency', Living Cultures: Contemporary Ethnographies of Culture Conference, Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds.

2008
Co-organiser of 'Cultural Diversity, Media and the Creative Arts' Symposium, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Cross-Institutional Collaboration: CTMP, Goethe-Insitut, Alliance Francaise and School of Languages, DIT. Panel Chair, ‘The Cultural Politics of Representation and Diversity Programming’.

‘Situating Migrant Political Agency Through Documentary Practice: Here To Stay’, Centre on Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, UK.

Co-organiser of ‘Migration Studies in Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Inaugural Conference’, Cross-Institutional Collaboration, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

2007
'The Political and Social Role of Documentary', Documentary Film in the 21st Century Conference, National Film School, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

'Transculturalism', Public Lecture. Mental Health in a Changing World: The Impact of Culture and Diversity, Royal College of Psychiatrists Symposium, Dublin.

'Projecting Migration: Lens-Based Research Practice', Trinity Immigration Initiative Launch, Dublin.

'Cultural Studies and Creative Practice', Cultural Studies Now: An International Conference. Keynote speaker. University of East London, UK.

'Mediating Migration and Migrant Media Production', Mediating 'The New Ireland' Conference, Irish Media Research Network (IMRN), Dublin.

‘Projecting Migration: Transcultural Documentary Practice’, MeCCSA/AMPE Conference, Coventry University.

2006
‘Politics and Ethics of Multisited Fieldwork’, Global City and Media Ethnography Summer School in Practice-Led Transcultural Research (in collaboration with NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development), Temple Bar, DIT.

‘Photography, Moving Image and the Aesthetics of Evidence: Media-Led Practice as Research Methodology’. NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Visual Culture and Globalization Lecture Series.

2003
‘Reframing Migration through the Prism of Practice-Based Research’. Visible Evidence XI Documentary Conference, School of Cultural Studies, University of West England.

2001
‘Notations: Framing the Kurdish Voice in Exile’, University of Sussex, Centre for Migration Studies, Music and Migration Workshop.

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