Martin Barker
Reader in Media Studies
Martin Barker's decision to take up a new post at Sussex can't have been an easy one. Not only had he taught at the University of the West of England for 29 years but in moving to Brighton he had to give up his passion for attending football games. He describes himself as a dedicated football fan and although it means changing allegiances he is just waiting for "the Albion to come home." He chose to come to Sussex because he wanted to test himself in a different environment and to go where there was an established postgraduate culture. He is also enjoying the opportunity to teach overseas students.
Martin has recently carried out two major pieces of ESRC funded research into audience and journalistic responses to film. The first was on the film Judge Dredd and he has just published the results with co-researcher Kate Brooks in a book entitled "Knowing Audiences Judge Dredd Its friends, fans and foes." He is currently working on a similar piece of research into David Cronenberg's Crash, which is to be completed at the end of April.
Aside from being a football fanatic, Martin is very active and does a lot of running, particularly around Preston Park, where he enjoys the opportunity of meeting other runners. Luckily, he is not put off by the hills here as "Bristol is just as bad." During the course of his research Martin interviews a lot of media studies students in schools. He gets some surprising responses and one of his favourites was to a question on the effect of studying media studies on watching films; "When we like a film we just watch it and enjoy it, but when it is really boring we do media studies on it."
