Andrew Moor elected Chair of Major Scholarly Association and to become Chief General Editor of its new academic journal

 He was one of the founder members of the Association, has served on its Executive Committee since its inception in 2011, and brought the Association’s 3rd annual conference to Manchester Metropolitan University in 2015.

BAFTSS exists to promote the recognition of the discipline and represent the academic and professional interests of those engaged in it to the academy, government, funding agencies, the cultural industries and the public. Since launching, the Association has established a strong community that covers a disciplinary range, from the sociology of mass communications through media and cultural studies, area studies, to cinema and other screen studies, including film practice. BAFTSS has a very healthy and growing membership of around 300 academics, postgraduates and other interested devotees. It also has a very active email list service with around 1200 subscribes worldwide. Its 5th Annual Conference has just taken place in Bristol and it looks forward to continuing its work by providing funds for academic events (including those run by postgraduates), running its annual academic publishing awards, and recognising the achievements of key academics and theorists though its Outstanding Achievement Awards. Previous awardees include Laura Mulvey, Richard Dyer, Charlotte Brunsdon, John Akomfrah, Christine Geraghty, Steve Neale and Sue Harper. Andy has worked on the EC to champion and develop all of these activities. BAFTSS is delighted that he takes the helm at what is an exciting time for the Association.

Andy said: ‘I am proud to have become Chair of BAFTSS since I’ve been committed to it since its birth, and working with great people on its Executive Committee has always been invigorating. I brought the BAFTSS Conference to Manchester Metropolitan University in 2015, and I’m already looking forward to our next conferences in Canterbury and then Birmingham. This is actually a very exciting time to be taking the helm of BAFTSS, as it is about to launch its new online peer-reviewed open access journal, Open Screens, which will be published by the forward-thinking Open Library of the Humanities. The journal will be “British” only by virtue of being produced by a British scholarly organisation: it encourages submissions from any part of the world and from non-members. It’s very exciting to have be Open Screens’ first Chief General Editor. We have wanted to work with Open Library of the Humanities for some time and I’m delighted we now have this relationship with them. I can’t wait to work with them and with our Editorial Board to establish Open Screens as a key academic journal – open to new technologies, to all cultures and to colleagues across the globe.

Professor Martin Paul Eve, a co-founder and CEO of the OLH, added: “While much of our work at OLH is focused on flipping subscription journals, helping learned societies to embrace open access is also a core part of our mission and a worthy goal. Sometimes learned societies fear open access since they subsidise their activities through journal publishing – which essentially comes from library budgets. Yet the broadest dissemination of disciplinary material is at the centre of the missions of learned societies and we are thrilled to work with BAFTSS to achieve this.”