Nicholas Garnham

Who is Nicholas Garnham?

Nicholas Garnham is Emeritus Professor at the University of Westminster in the academic field of Media Studies. Garnham attended Winchester College from 1950 to 1955 where the major influence on his thinking was British socialist historian R.H.Tawney. His main interests were British history, architecture and cinema, the last of which has remained a lifelong passion and research focus. Garnham served in the Royal Navy from 1956 to 1958. He was in one of the last drafts to the service under compulsory conscription. He studied briefly at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1958 before moving to study English literature at Cambridge that same year. From 1962 until 1970 he was a director and film editor at the BBC. He left to enter academia at the Polytechnic of Central London to teach film making and film theory. Garnham was central in establishing first Media Studies degree at the University, a Bachelor of Arts course in 1975. He also became part of the university’s newly established Communication Studies Department. He was Governor of the British Film Institute from 1973 to 1977. He was founding editor of, and has remained a senior editor of, the journal Media, Culture and Society since it was first published in 1979.