Television Studies and CST: The Past, the Present and the Future
8-10 July 2025
Edge Hill University, St James Campus, Manchester Oxford Road and online
It has been 20 years since the conference that inaugurated Critical Studies in Television. Then, we invited scholars to reflect on the state of play regarding the field, allowing us to consider the multiple disciplinary influences, the breadth of its methodological approaches and future directions. Now, Critical Studies in Television has become part of the discipline: one of few journals dedicated to television in which the field is delineated and expanded, developed and rethought. The twentieth anniversary gives us an opportunity to pause and consider where our subject is and might go.
We thus hope to discuss the following questions:
- How can we conceptualise television now?
- Why and how should we study television now?
- What has television studies become?
- What are we studying now?
- Where may/should it go in the future?
- What is television studies’ place in the academy?
- What topical concerns and methods have developed in our field and how do we evaluate them?
- What is missing in our research?
- What interdisciplinary approaches are or might be useful?
- What can we learn from television’s and television studies’ histories?
- What role has CST played in the field and what should it address in the future?
- How does television (studies) sit in relation to other fields of knowledge which are perhaps perceived as more pressing in terms of addressing the sense of crises pervading life?
- As well as any other contributions on television and television studies
Our Keynote:
We are excited to announce that Prof. Catherine Johnson, University of Leeds, will join us to give the keynote at our conference.
An Agenda for Television Studies: Lessons from the Past, Requirements for the Future
As television shifts from a broadcast to an online medium, what should be the role of TV studies? Arguing for the need to account for the multi-faceted nature of contemporary television, this keynote proposes an agenda for the future of TV studies. It argues that internet-delivered television demands new theorisations of television as software and new digital tools and methods. At the same time, there is much to be gained from returning to earlier methods and approaches and exploring how they can be adapted to understand new forms of ‘small screen’ media and account for contemporary viewing behaviours. Finally, as the future of TV and public service media are currently being debated by policymakers in the UK and beyond, the keynote ends with a call to action: it argues that TV studies scholars need to engage more directly with policymakers to ensure that critical decisions about the future of television draw on, and benefit from, the depth of expertise within TV studies as a discipline.
Catherine Johnson is Professor of Media and Communication in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, UK and the author/editor of six books and many articles. Her current research examines the transformation of screen media by platforms and stream through analysis of policy, regulation, industry, texts and audiences. She leads the PSM-AP project (Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms), funded by a €1.5m CHANSE grant, that examines the impact of global streaming platforms on public service media in 6 countries. She is a member of the DCMS College of Experts and has advised the DCMS Select Committee on the future of public service media and pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Media Bill. She is currently chairing the Audiences working group for the DCMS’s Future of TV Distribution Stakeholder Forum.