University of Glasgow

Comfort TV - theorising the everyday use of TV as an apparatus of therapeutic reward, the restoration of identity, & other affects

Academic History:

2006 - 2010 Honours of the First Class, Masters of Arts (MA) Film & Television Studies

2011 - 2012 Pass with Distinction, Masters of Letters (MLitt) Film & Television Studies

Supervisors:

Dr Amy Holdsworth

Professor Karen Lury

Research Interests:

The Comfort TV Research Project is all about working to better understand how audiences use television as an everyday tool for comort. By comfort, I mean something which has the potential to not only relax viewers, but also to strengthen, soothe & rejuvenate; essentially, television that makes you feel better. The depth & variety of television content available via TV sets, laptops, mobile devices & tablets is incredibly vast & fluid, as are the amount of ways in which audiences now choose to put that content to use & make meanings from it. & that's exactly what this project is concerned with, looking at how successfully (or not) audiences use & adapt TV in an attempt to respond to their immediate situation, to meet their physical & emotional needs, as a reaction to life around & beyond the screen.

This relatively untapped area for study is hugely exciting & reflects current shifts within the field, moving away from assessments of quality, of "good" TV, towards how TV is in fact used & valued by audiences, its function, purpose & meaning within their everyday lives. When the project is complete, we will have a far better understanding of exactly how audiences are utilising, responding to & adapting television to meet their daily needs, & how successful television actually is as a tool for viewer comfort. Furthermore, the project seeks to clarify where & how comfort value originates, & how it's purpose & effect is understood by viewers, with such evidence potentially proving highly valuable to film & TV academia & overlapping fields (such as social & cultural studies), institutions such as the NHS & other care providers (evidencing how TV might be reconsidered as a soothing or therapeutic tool with multiple applications), & finally to the broadcasting industry itself as valuable viewing data.

Previous Research Projects:

My undergraduate dissertation was concerned with the structure & development of the Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89, 2005-present) story world/franchise created by Russell T. Davies.

My postgraduate dissertation explored the revival & remediation of archive television content for contemporary audiences, examining different instances of archive restoration, remastering & recreation & how that impacts the original media.

Scholarships:

(2015 - present) AHRC DTP Studentship

Contact Details:

Address: Department of Theatre, Film & Television Studies, Gilmorehill Centre, 9 University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ

Work Tel No: 07805 935 754

Email: k.castle.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Website/Blogs: www.comforttv.wordpress.com

First published: 14 September 2015