Professor James Bennett is Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (Creative Industries) at Royal Holloway and Director of CoSTAR National Lab, UK’s largest ever investment in creative industries R&D, partnering with Pinewood, BT, University of Surrey, Abertay University and the National Film and Television School. He is he founding Director of StoryFutures Strategic Business Unit at Royal Holloway, an interdisciplinary unit for delivering industry-facing R&D and training. His leadership of StoryFutures has delivered 3 of the UK’s highest profile immersive R&D projects at Royal Holloway: StoryFutures Creative Cluster; StoryFutures Academy: National Centre for Immersive Storytelling and StoryTrails: The People’s Metaverse. Alongside CoSTAR, StoryFutures is currently delivering the groundbreaking £12m UKRI doctoral training centre in AI for digital media inclusion with the University of Surrey.

He has led and delivered grants and awards across commercial and public sectors totalling over £85m, winning funding from across the UK research council spectrum (from AHRC to EPSRC, British Council to Innovate), national government departments (DCMS), creative industries arm’s length bodies (BFI), and local economic partners (EM3, Surrey County Council), as well as commercial R&D partners (Niantic, Meta, Discovery).

Across this work he has led and delivered successful R&D partnerships with organisations including The National Gallery, the BBC, the BFI, Niantic, Heathrow, Epic, ILM and many more.

He is the former Head of Media Arts (2014/15-216/17) and a Professor in Digital Culture & Television. He was formerly the Principal Investigator on the 'Social Media as Television Production Technology' project as part of Royal Holloway's ADAPT TV History research. His work focuses on the production cultures and shape of television and celebrity in digital culture. His latest edited collection, Media Independence: Working with freedom or working for free (Routledge, 2014), examines the role independence plays in the formation and role of media systems around the world.

Prior to these roles he was Principal Investigator on a 2-year AHRC grant, multiplatforming public service broadcasting (AH-H018522-2), which examined the role independents and multiplatform productions play in the future of PSB (2010-2012).This produced the industry report: Multiplatforming Public Service Broadcasting. He was one of the founding editors of Celebrity Studies Journal, leading the organisation of the inaugural and second Celebrity Studies Conference in 2012 and 2014.

He is the author of Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen (Routledge, 2010) and the editor (with Niki Strange) of Television as Digital Media (Duke University Press, 2011) and (with Tom Brown) Film & Television After DVD (Routledge, 2008). His work has been published in Screen, Cinema Journal, Convergence, New Review of Film & Television, and Celebrity Studies Journal. He remains on the Celebrity Studies Journal editorial board as well as the editorial board of Television & New Media.

Twitter: @james_a_bennett