Professor Rob Stone BA, PhD

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• BA (Film and Art)
• PhD (Spanish film and literature)

After graduating in Film Studies and Art History, I worked for several years in Spain and completed my doctoral studies on flamenco in Spanish film and literature at the University of Wales. I then worked as lecturer in the University of Aberystwyth before moving to Swansea University in 2004, where I was Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Media and Communication. I was made Professor in 2007 and this was recognised by ANECA (Spanish Government) in 2010.

I became Chair of European Film at the University of Birmingham in 2012 and for 2012-14 I was awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust that enabled me to work on a monograph on Basque cinema with a colleague from the University of Deusto in San Sebastian that was published in English and Spanish. In 2015 I was awarded the Koldo Mitxelena Chair in Basque Studies at the University of Chicago. Amongst other publications and editorial responsibilities, I am co-founder and co-editor of the Routledge series Remapping World Cinema: Regional Tensions and Global Transformations and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to World Cinema. At the University of Birmingham I co-direct B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies, supervise numerous research students, and lecture on American and European cinema. I have contributed to Time Out, Cinemascope and Sight & Sound as well as film notes and commentary to the Region 2 DVDs of the films of Julio Medem and The Criterion Collection blu-ray box-set of Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy.

I lecture on World Cinema, American and European Cinema, Film Authorship, European Philosophy in relation to cinema (Bergson, Deleuze, Bakhtin, Baudrillard, Sørenson), Film Theory, Philosophy and Politics.

I welcome enquiries about research supervision in relevant areas of World Cinema. I have supervised and examined numerous theses and am currently supervising the following PhD theses amongst others:

Hui-Han Chen on a new theorisation of slow cinema for World Cinema.
Will McKeown on the political meanings of contemporary horror cinema.
Karolina Ginalska on ethnographic filmmaking.
Petra Olaoye on affect in American independent cinema.
Luis Freijo on de-westernising the western.
Ira Ortigosa on sub-titling and dubbing in Basque cinema
"We are having a wonderful, life-changing postgraduate experience at the University of Birmingham with its state-of-the-art campus and various academic and social events for postgraduates, which offer opportunities to meet brilliant fellow students whose friendship is enriching. The PhD course gives you the freedom to direct and refine your own research with expert guidance from academics whose supervision is helpful, rigorous and inspiring. The close interaction between students and supervisors, other academic staff, and a cohort of research students keeps our research progress on track and constantly improving. We would recommend it to anyone with a penchant for film and a curious, inquiring mind because the University of Birmingham is the perfect place to study if film is your academic interest."

- Hui-Han Chen, Luis Freijo, and Will McKeown, MA by Research and PhD in Film Studies students

Find out more - our PhD Film Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

I have a wide range of research interests related to Film Studies and World Cinema and have published on Hispanic cinema (particularly, Spanish, Basque and Cuban cinema), on European cinema, and on independent American cinema. I am particularly interested in the interaction and overlap of history, politics and philosophy in film aesthetics. I am currently working on a range of projects that include a revisionist history of American independent cinema, adaptations of Don Quixote, and representations of neurodiversity in film and television. I have published in English, Spanish and Italian and have been awarded major research grants by the AHRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Mellon Foundation.

I am founder and co-director with Dr Andrew Watts of B-Film: The Birmingham Centre for Film Studies, a thriving research centre in the College of Arts and Law.

I am also co-founder and editorial board member of the Remapping World Cinema: Regional Tensions and Global Transformations series from Routledge and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to World Cinema. I am editorial board member of Studies in European Cinema (Intellect) and co-editor with Dr Dunja Fehimović of the annual Screen Arts issue of the Hispanic Research Journal. I am also on the advisory board of (In)Transition, Ikusgaiak: Cuadernos de Cinematografía and Studies in Hispanic Cinemas (Intellect). I serve on the review panels of GAČR: The Czech Science Foundation, the Qatar National Research Fund, the United Kingdom Research Institute (UKRI), the Leverhulme Trust and the Review Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

I am reader and reviewer for a great many journals and publishers. I have also provided consultancy, onscreen film notes and full-length feature audio commentary on the Metro-Tartan DVD release of Julio Medem’s Basque Ball (2005) and I curated a season of Basque Cinema at the National Film Theatre, London. I also appear with Dr Dave Johnson on the special feature “3x2: A Conversation” on The Criterion Collection blu-ray box-set of Richard Linklater’s The Before Trilogy. I have spoken by invitation at numerous universities , arts centres, cinemas and cultural centres in the UK, Cuba, Spain, the Basque Country, and the USA, as well as at a Cultural Committee Meeting at the House of Commons, Westminster. I have presented my own documentary on Basque Cinema at the Belfast Film Festival and have also appeared as panellist on film magazine programmes on Radio Nacional Española, Cadena Ser, Radio Madrid and Screen Brum on Brum Radio.