Dr Shane O'Sullivan
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Film and Photography
- School of Arts
Head of Department, Film and Photography
- Email:
- s.osullivan@kingston.ac.uk
About
I am an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Film and Photography at Kingston School of Art. I teach screenwriting, documentary and fiction production, and lectured in filmmaking and film distribution at Regents University and Birmingham City University before coming to Kingston in 2014.
My work as a filmmaker includes three feature documentaries exploring contemporary political history which have been broadcast worldwide: Killing Oswald, RFK Must Die and Children of the Revolution, which was released in thirty cinemas across Japan in 2014. My video essay Anatomy of a Murder - Sirhan Sirhan and Robert Kennedy was shortlisted for Best Research Film of the Year in the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2016.
Drawing on my interest in the creative reuse of the archive, I am the UK Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Make Film History project, supported by the British Film Institute, BBC Archive, Northern Ireland Screen and the Irish Film Institute, which opens up the archives to young filmmakers across the UK and Ireland. The project won the Excellence in Unlocking the Value and Potential of Archives Award at the FIAT/IFTA Archive Achievement Awards 2021.
In 2021, I executive produced three short films for the New Creatives scheme through a consortium led by the ICA and funded by BBC Arts and Arts Council England.
I am the author of two books: Who Killed Bobby? The Unsolved Murder of Robert F. Kennedy (2008) and Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA (2018), recently republished as The Watergate Burglars (2022). I am also a regular contributor to The Washington Post, with seven opinion pieces drawing parallels between political scandals during the Nixon and Trump presidencies. I have been interviewed about my work by the BBC, CNN, NHK, Sky History, Al Jazeera and Russia Today.
Qualifications
- Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy
- PhD in Film, University of Roehampton
- Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching, University of the Arts, London
- BA (Hons) Economics and Social Studies (2:1), Trinity College, Dublin
Domains
My teaching is focused on screenwriting, documentary and fiction production at undergraduate and postgraduate level. I am the university liaison for our partnerships with NAHEMI, albert, London Higher, the Kingston International Film Festival and the ARRI Certified Film School Accreditation Program, which offers our students an advanced camera skills qualification.
I served as an external examiner for four years at London Metropolitan University, assessing undergraduate degrees in Film and Broadcast Production, and Music Technology. I have also worked as an external consultant for the validation of Filmmaking programmes by the University of Winchester, the University of Liverpool and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU); and moderated Cultural Technology modules for Liverpool and XJTLU.
I am a PhD supervisor and a member of the Centre for Practice Research in the Arts at Kingston. I am interested in supervising doctoral candidates with practice-based projects focused on documentary filmmaking and distribution, creative reuse of the archive or reframing political history.
Courses taught
My research includes three archive-driven feature documentaries on political history, RFK Must Die (2008), Children of the Revolution (2010) and Killing Oswald (2013); two books on political history; and published articles on film history, intelligence studies, documentary distribution and the use of moving image archive in education.
Drawing on my professional knowledge of creative reuse and licensing archival material, I devised a pilot at Kingston in 2017 to give student filmmakers access to 12 documentaries from the BFI National Archive for creative reuse on course-related projects under an educational license. The success of the pilot led to the creation of the Archives for Education scheme and the AHRC-funded Make Film History project, which offer free access to 270 films from the BFI, BBC Archive, Northern Ireland Screen and the Irish Film Institute for creative reuse by emerging filmmakers: www.archivesforeducation.com
Eighty-four higher education institutions have signed up to the scheme, which has now expanded beyond higher education to emerging filmmakers in schools and training programmes across the UK and Ireland. I am the UK Principal Investigator on the Make Film History project, alongside Irish PI, Dr Ciara Chambers (University College Cork). An impact case study on the scheme scored 3* or above in Kingston's REF submission in 2021: https://www.kingston.ac.uk/research/research-showcase/research-case-studies/reuse-film/
Specialisms
- Documentary filmmaking and distribution
- Creative reuse of archive material
- Political history
- Intelligence studies
Scholarly affiliations
- Learning on Screen Trustee
- National Association for Higher Education in the Moving Image (NAHEMI)
- Working Lead, Screen Heritage Group, Documentary Film Council
- Kingston University Peer Review College
Public and Civic roles
- Festival Committee, Kingston International Film Festival
Publications
The Watergate burglars : Nixon, dirty tricks, and the CIA
O'Sullivan, Shane (2022). New York, U.S.: (Skyhorse)
A guide to the creative reuse of archive film : for young filmmakers and educators in the UK and Ireland
O'Sullivan, Shane and Chambers, Clara (2021). U.K.: (Make Film History)
Dirty tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA
O'Sullivan, Shane (2018). New York: (Skyhorse Publishing)
In jail with Sirhan Sirhan
(2016). London, U.K.: (Shane O'Sullivan)
Who killed Bobby? The unsolved murder of Robert F. Kennedy
O'Sullivan, Shane (2008). New York, U.S.A.: (Union Square Press)
Make film history : opening up the archives to emerging filmmakers
O'Sullivan, Shane, Chambers, Ciara and McAuliffe, Colm, 2023, VIEW : Journal of European Television History and Culture (12), 23, pp 53-68
This film is restricted : the training films of the British Security Service
O'Sullivan, Shane, 2018, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (38), 2, pp 275-295
Meinhof, Shigenobu, Kennedy : revolution and assassination in 1968
O'Sullivan, Shane, 2017, VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture (6), 12, pp 12-40
Archives for education : the creative reuse of moving images in the UK
O'Sullivan, Shane, 2017, The Moving Image (17), 2, pp 1-19
The economy of memory: Archive-driven documentaries in the digital age
O'Sullivan, Shane, 2013, The Journal of Media Practice (14), 3, pp 231-248
The rise of the feature documentary : fact or fiction?
O'Sullivan, Shane (2017). In: Wroot, Jonathan, (eds.) and Willis, Andy, (eds.), DVD, Blu-ray and beyond : navigating formats and platforms within media consumption. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 135-157
Enemy of the state : framing the political assassin
O'Sullivan, Shane (2016). In: de Valk, Mark, (ed.), Screening the tortured body : the cinema as scaffold. London, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 281-317
McCord's final PowerPoint to his family about his role in Watergate
O'Sullivan, Shane(2022). In: The Watergate Break-in : 50 years later, 09 - 10 Jun 2022 :Held online
Persona non grata : spy fiction in MI5 training films
O'Sullivan, Shane(2015). In: Spying on spies : popular representations of spies and espionage, 03 - 05 Sep 2015 :London, U.K.
Documentaries and the UK home video market
O'Sullivan, Shane(2015). In: Distributors, discs and disciples : exploring the home media renaissance, 23 May 2015 :Worcester, U.K.
Enemies of the state: framing political subversives in documentary film
O'Sullivan, Shane (2013), PhD thesis, Roehampton University