Professor David Forrest

School of English

Deputy Vice President for Education (Student Experience)

Professor in Film and Television Studies

Dave Forrest New Image 2023 update
Dave Forrest Profile Picture
Profile picture of Dave Forrest New Image 2023 update
d.forrest@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 8493

Full contact details

Professor David Forrest
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
Profile

I joined the School of English as a Lecturer in 2012, became Senior Lecturer in 2016, and was promoted to Professor in Film and Television Studies in 2021. In 2018 I was made Faculty Director of Learning and Teaching, having previously served in an interim capacity as Assistant Faculty Director of Learning and Teaching and University Director of Learning and Teaching for Student Engagement. In 2023 I became Deputy Vice President for Education (Student Experience) - I maintain teaching, research and impact activities in the School of English alongside this role.

Research interests

My research is concerned with questions of realism, class, region, and sport in film, television, and literature, and I am increasingly interested in the relationships between representations of place and landscape and audiences’ and readers’ lived experiences. I am also an active researcher in the areas of higher education pedagogy and student experience, with particular interests in student engagement and engaged learning.

Much of my work has been focused on the novelist and film and television writer Barry Hines, perhaps best known for the novel A Kestrel for a Knave (1968) and the TV play, Threads (1984). Together with my co-author Professor Sue Vice, I completed a book on Hines that was published by Manchester University Press in 2017. My next book, on Kes, will be published as part of the Bloomsbury/BFI Film Classics series.

My third monograph, New Realisms: Contemporary British Cinema, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2020, and concluded a decade long exploration of the evolution of contemporary realist cinema in Britain.

Between 2017 and 2021 I was co-investigator on the AHRC project ‘Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Films in English Regions’, working alongside colleagues from the universities of Glasgow, Liverpool and York. This work developed my interests in audiences and particularly the use of focus groups in film studies research.

I was Principal Investigator on the OFS/Research England-funded project ‘Transforming and Activating Places’ (2020-2022), collaborating with colleagues from Arts and Humanities Knowledge Exchange to better understand ‘what works’ in student knowledge exchange. This two-year project funded 140 students to undertake enhanced work placements with partner organisations in Sheffield and beyond, and built upon my long standing interests in engaged learning, employability, inclusive pedagogy, and place-based education.

My other ongoing research projects concern the histories of British realism in film and television, and the role of sports narratives in British culture. I am particularly interested in what happens when former athletes, such as David Storey and Barry Hines, become writers, and what their ‘sports stories’ have to tell us about class, mental health, education, and gender. I am also at work on various additional projects relating to David Storey. 

I serve on the editorial board of The Journal of British Cinema and Television and review journal articles for Studies in European Cinema, The Sociological Review, New Cinemas, The Journal of War and Culture Studies, The Creative Industries Journal, and The European Journal of Cultural Studies, amongst others, and co-convene the British Association of Film and Television Studies Special Interest Group on British Cinema and Television.

I have also written about football and running for publications including The Guardian and Like the Wind magazine, and I have featured on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Four, amongst others.

Publications

Books

  • Forrest D (2024) Kes: BFI Film Classics. London: BFI/Bloomsbury. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Wessels B, Merrington P, Hanchard M & Forrest D (2022) Film Audiences Personal Journeys with Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2020) New Realism: Contemporary British Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D & Vice S (2017) Barry Hines: Kes, Threads and Beyond. Manchester: Manchester University Press. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2013) Social Realism: Art, Nationhood and Politics. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Rodriguez-Falcon E, Barrett J, Allam C, Evans M & Forrest D (2010) The Inclusive Learning and Teaching Handbook. The Inclusive Learning and Teaching Project, University of Sheffield. RIS download Bibtex download

Edited books

Journal articles

Chapters

  • Merrington P, Hanchard M, Wessels B, Pidd M, Rogers K, Forrest D, Higson A, Smits R, Townsend N & Yates S (2023) Using mixed-methods, a data model and a computational ontology in film audience research, Audience Data and Research (pp. 38-51). Routledge RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2020) Landscapes of Resistance in the English North: the Poetics of Freedom in Kes (1969) and The Selfish Giant (2013) In Müller KP (Ed.), Scotland and Arbroath 1320 – 2020 700 Years of Fighting for Freedom, Sovereignty, and Independence Oxford: Peter Lang. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Vice S & Forrest D (2020) Kes: from page to screen In Mayne L, Petrie D & Williams M (Ed.), Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered Edinburgh University Press RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2019) Art cinema and the British poetic realist tradition In Newland P & Hoyle B (Ed.), British Art Cinema: Creativity, Experimentation and Innovation Manchester University Press RIS download Bibtex download
  • Marwood K, Cleall E, Crewe V, Forrest D, Pillatt T, Thorpe G & Johnston R (2019) From researching heritage to action heritage (pp. 171-186). Bristol University Press RIS download Bibtex download
  • Cheeseman M & Forrest D (2018) The Narrative Nightclub, Youth Subcultures in Fiction, Film and Other Media (pp. 91-107). Springer International Publishing RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2017) Mike Leigh and the Poetics of English Suburbia In Forrest D, Harper G & Rayner J (Ed.), Filmurbia: Screening the Suburbs (pp. 49-63). London: Palgrave Macmillan. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2017) Jimmy McGovern’s The Street and the Politics of Everyday Life, Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain (pp. 29-43). Palgrave Macmillan UK RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D & Vice S (2017) Screening South Yorkshire: The Gamekeeper and Looks and Smiles In Mazierska E (Ed.), Heading North: The North of England in Film and Television (pp. 113-132). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D, Harper G & Rayner J (2017) Introduction. Filmurbia: Cinema and the Suburbs, Filmurbia (pp. 1-10). Palgrave Macmillan UK RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D & Johnson B (2017) Introduction, Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain (pp. 1-9). Palgrave Macmillan UK RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D & Vice S (2016) Archival Traces of the North in Barry Hines' Looks and Smiles (1981) and Threads (1984) In Dobson J & Rayner J (Ed.), Mapping Cinematic Norths (pp. 17-45). Oxford: Peter Lang. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D & Vice S (2015) A Poetics of the North: Visual and Literary Geographies In Chignell H, Franklin I & Skoog K (Ed.), Regional Aesthetics Mapping UK Media Cultures (pp. 55-70). Palgrave Macmillan RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2013) 21st Century Social Realism: Shane Meadows and New British Realism In Bell M & Fradley M (Ed.) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2013) Twenty-first-century social realism: Shane meadows and new British realism, Shane Meadows: Critical Essays (pp. 35-49). RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2013) Sheffield Film Studies and Sheffield Studies Film In Harper G & Rayner J (Ed.), Film Landscapes: Cinema, Environment and Visual Culture Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D () Moving beyond ‘That Hill’: Shelagh Delaney, David Storey, and a new class topography of the British New Wave David Forrest and Melanie Williams In O'Neill D & Flint-Nicol K (Ed.), Beyond the Council Estate Cinematic Space(s) of the Working Class RIS download Bibtex download

Book reviews

Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries

  • Forrest D (2012) David Lean. In Directory of World Cinema: Britain. Britstol: Intellect. RIS download Bibtex download

Presentations

  • Forrest D & Hanchard M Through falling in love it’s like he’s seeing this landscape, seeing that beauty. University of Birmingham. RIS download Bibtex download

Other

  • Forrest D (2012) English Filming, English Writing by Jefferson Hunter. Journal of Screenwriting, 3(1), 119-121. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Forrest D (2010) Straight Outta Uttoxeter: Studying Shane Meadows, University of East Anglia, 15-16 April 2010. New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 8(2), 137-140. RIS download Bibtex download
Research group

I currently supervise and co-supervise PhD students working on a range of projects, including research on contemporary British realist cinema, cultural representations of the North of England and an archival study of British television drama. Previous student projects have included work on contemporary British realist cinema, the lost works of Barry Hines, and heritage television. I welcome applications from students wishing to work on most areas of British cinema, European cinema, television drama, and on literary, film and television narratives of region, sport and social class.

Teaching activities

I convene the following modules: EGH 244: Screening Britain, and EGH 351: Imagining the North. 

In 2014 I was awarded a University of Sheffield Senate Award for excellence in Learning and Teaching, and in 2016 I was made a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.