+44 (0)161 295 6062                                         b.halligan@salford.ac.uk 

                                                            

Benjamin Halligan, BA MPhil PhD (Aberystwyth), is the Director of the Graduate Programme, and Senior Lecturer, in the School of Media, Music and Performance. He is a member of the Communication, Cultural & Media Studies Research Centre. Ben joined the University of Salford in 2007 from York St John University, where he had lectured since 2001.

Research and publications

Ben’s research covers: British horror cinema (the monograph Michael Reeves was published by Manchester University Press in 2003), contemporary popular British music (his co-edited book Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Art, Music and Politics was published by Ashgate in 2010) and ex-Yugoslav cinema (articles and chapters include “Guest Worker: Dušan Makavejev’s Capitalist Phase” and “Idylls of Socialism: The Sarajevo Documentary School and the Problem of the Bosnian Subproletariat”).


Ben has co-convened a number of international conferences at the University of Salford, including: Sights and Sounds: Interrogating the Music Documentary (with the late David Sanjek, Summer 2010; keynote address from Jeff Feuerzeig), and Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures: Noise, Affect, Politics (with Michael Goddard, Summer 2010: speakers included Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite and Stephen Lawrie of The Telescopes). The former has led to his forthcoming co-edited book The Music Documentary (Routledge, 2013), the latter to two further books Ben has co-edited: Reverberations: The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise (Continuum, 2012; contributors include Brian Massumi) and Resonances: Noise and Music (Continuum, 2013; contributors include Sheila Whiteley).


He is currently researching and writing on the historical and ideological connections between the countercultures and neoliberalism, along poststructural and hauntological lines. Published work in this area covers television (“Disco Galactica: Futures Past and Present” and, at press, “The Nostalgic Mode of Imperial Legitimation: Silencing the Subjects for the Television Coverage of Royal Events”), film (“The Autumn in Germany: A Dialogue on Fassbinder and Terrorism”, “Filming the Post-Fordist Worker: From Industrial Hollywood to Digital Biopolitics”), music (“From Countercultures to Suburban Cultures: Frank Zappa after 1968”) and, forthcoming, nightclubbing and social media, and early information technology. For a full list of Ben’s publications and conference papers, click here.

Media and public engagement

Ben works as an occasional journalist (for The Independent newspaper, and a number of online sites), a visiting lecturer (including with Antonio Negri for the “Alternative Cultures Beyond Borders” international summer school in Split, Croatia, in 2008), a DVD commentator, interview subject and booklet writer, a photographer (DJ shoots include Boy George, Hed Kandi and Judge Jules), and has presented and interviewed for high profile events at the BFI Southbank (London), the National Media Museum (Bradford), I Mille Occhi (Trieste) and, as a jury member, at the Leeds International Film Festival. Ben is currently an External Examiner at the University of Derby.

Graduate programme

Ben co-ordinates the programme of talks and discussions for all postgraduate research students in the School and beyond. Recent visiting lecturers have included Franco “Bifo” Berardi on schizoanalysis, Charlie Gere on friendship and social media, Sunil Manghani (presenting on his book Image Critique and the Fall of the Berlin Wall), David Walsh on the politics of Hollywood, Alberto Toscano on Japanese radical film, Xavier Mendik on his documentary work on video nasties, Owen Hatherley on Pulp (and his book Uncommon), and Derek Scott on the Eurovision Song Contest. For further information, and updates on the Salford postgraduate community’s news and events, see Ben’s postgraduate blog.

Teaching and MPhil/PhD supervision

Ben lectures in the areas of performance, media and film at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and specialises in post-war British theatre, surrealist and absurdist theatre, media aesthetics, art and theology, and proto-Modernist playwrights.


He currently supervises postgraduate research students on topics such as masculinities and television, music and the city, semiotics and advertising, documentary-making (including “practice as research” submissions of documentaries), and Northern comedy, and welcomes postgraduate applications in the following areas: twentieth century British theatre, including post-dramatic theatre; post-war popular musics; European and Soviet cinema, particularly the horror film; North American cinema, particularly of the counterculture and New Hollywood; comedy and theatre, film and television; critical theory, particularly Post-Autonomist and globalisation theory; television drama; theology and art; broadcast news and reportage, psychoanalysis and artistic discourse.