Dr. Mark Ryan, publishing as Mark David Ryan, is an Associate Professor in film and screen and a Chief Investigator for the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC). He is an expert in screen industries research, Australian genre cinema, genre film studies, and digital media.
He is a Chief Investigator of various funded research projects and research fellowships:
- Valuing Web Series: Economic, Industrial, Cultural and Social Value (LP180100626)(2019-2023)
- Australian Cultural & Creative Activity: A Population & Hotspot Analysis (LP160101724)(2017-2020)
- 2018: Research Fellowship, AFI Research Collection, Australian Film Institute and RMIT University
- 2018 Innovation Connections Grant
- 2018 QUT, Institute of Future Environments (IFE) Catapult Project
He was the President of the Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand (SSAAAZ) between 2015 and 2018 and an Executive Member of Australian Screen Producers Education and Research Association (ASPERA) in 2015/2016. He is the co-editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand 2 – an examination of Australian feature films by popular movie genre.
His research has been published in leading film and media studies journals, including New Review of Film & Television Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture and Policy, Senses of Cinema, and Studies in Australasian Cinema. His book chapters appear in collections published by leading international academic publishers including Routledge, Sage, University of Toronto Press, University of Ottawa Press, and Bloomsbury Press. Mark has edited special issues in key film and media journals. He is currently editing a Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (FHAANZ) conference special issue (10.2; 2016) for Studies in Australasian Cinema. In 2010, he was invited to edit ‘Australasian Horror’ (4:1; 2010), a special issue for Studies in Australasian Cinema and the first journal issue dedicated to Australian and New Zealand horror cinema research articles. In the same year he edited the special issue ‘Film, Cinema, Screen’ (no. 136; 2010) for Australia’s premiere media and communications journal Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture and Policy, and was invited to edit the ‘Horror Movies’ (pp.188-207; 2010) section of the first edition of the Directory of World Cinema: Australia and New Zealand.
In 2014, Mark was the chief investigator of an empirical study titled ‘How is Australian Cinema Studies Taught in Australian Universities’. He was a chief investigator of the second Australian Screen Producer (ASP) survey, a nation-wide study of the motivations and practices of screen producers in four key industry sectors: film, television, corporate production and digital media. In 2015, Mark co-convened the XVIIth Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (FHAANZ) which brought together researchers from Australia and New Zealand as well as China, Italy, and the US. Mark has supervised five PHD theses and two Master’s theses – both traditional research theses and practice-led research projects – investigating a diverse range of subjects including horror studies, film and television studies, animation studies, and public diplomacy and cultural industries.