Branch Reps

SOLENT UCU BRANCH OFFICERS as of October 11th 2024

Branch President & Health and Safety Officer: Stephen Desmond

Vice-President: Sinan Kwandah

Branch Secretary : Mark Bennett

Membership Secretary: Felix King

Treasurer:  

Equality Officer:  Sasha Hallsey

Environmental Officer:  Trish Morris

Research Mentorship Officer: Kamran Qureshi  

Press & Outreach Officer: Rob Benham

Ordinary Members of the Committee: Nancy Beckett-Jones

Johnny Hopkins

Craig Lees

SCHOOL REPRESENTATIVES (Officers and Committee Members are also School Reps): 

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BIOGRAPHIES

Stephen Desmond

Branch President / UCU Solent Health & Safety Officer 

Biography

Stephen has been a senior lecturer in film and television production at Solent University since 2009, teaching across the BA Film Production, BA Film, and MA Film Production degrees. He has also taught photography production in other degree programmes at Solent. Stephen teaches documentary film production, fiction film production, and experimental film production, screenwriting, history and theory of film, media studies, and critical approaches to mass media. Stephen’s ‘Intro to Film Editing’ classes at Solent received the highest student feedback (SUE survey) results of any unit on the BA Film Production course. Stephen was the recipient of Solent’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2018. He has 38 practice-based research outputs (films, articles, radio broadcasts, installations, artefacts, conference presentations) which meet the criteria of the Research Excellence Framework of the UK. See recent publications, below, for full details and an extract from the PURE system of public research records.

Stephen is a commissioned filmmaker, university lecturer, and film journalist. He has over 20 years’ lecturing experience in the field of film production and film studies and has been at the top of the senior lecturer scale in the UK for 18 years. He loves teaching diverse, international, and non-traditional, as well as traditional students. He believes passionately in expanding participation in higher education. He loves teaching in a team of committed colleagues.

Stephen has extensive experience in the post-production industry as an editor and trainer of editors across the broadcast sector. He has an early-career specialism in media management and film commissioning for the independent sector. In higher education, Stephen has extensive experience in curriculum development and course management at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Some notable facts:

  • Stephen won a scholarship to complete his MA at the University of Michigan (ranked in the world’s top 20 universities). He graduated with a 3.9-grade point average on a 4 point scale – one of the highest GPAs ever recorded in the School of Literature, Science and Arts at the University.
  • Stephen is currently completing his PhD (a comparative praxis-study of Pedro Almodovar and Todd Haynes) at Dublin City University, considered to be one of the most innovative universities in the EU.
  • Stephen’s undergraduate degree is from DCU. In a university that accepts only the top 5% of school leavers, Stephen graduated third in his class of 72 students.
  • Stephen developed and ran the highly successful MA in Video Production and Film Studies at UWL for over six years (see Awards, below, for the full text of Roger Mills’ letter nominating Stephen to the Higher Education Academy)
  • Stephen is known for mentoring and developing student final year production projects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels which have success in the broadcast industry: At Solent, Stephen supervised Sophie Klingberg Kruhoffer’s ground-breaking final MA film about grief and bereavement that went on to be broadcast on Danish National Television.
  • Previously, Stephen supervised Yvonne Tang in producing her final MA Film Temple of the Tigers, a feature-length documentary that was sold to Discovery Channel, who provided additional production funding. The film ultimately became the broadcast hit of the year for Discovery around the world.
  • Stephen taught for seven years in the postgraduate division at the Parsons School of Design in New York ranked number one in the US as a university of the creative arts.
  • At the age of just 30, Stephen was offered the position of executive director and President of the Board of Trustees of Film/Video Arts, the largest non-profit centre for independent filmmaking in the US.
  • Stephen is the founder of the Centre for Conflict Resolution Journalism.
  • Stephen’s post-production industry client list includes: The Centre for Conflict Resolution Journalism, Penn Chemicals BV, Dublin Institute of Technology, AVID Technology UK, Jim Bambrick & Associates, Headband & Liniment, Fuji International Productions, Moviola Digital, Post Resources, WTNH-TV8 New Haven, WBNE New Haven, Ticino Films, Lancer Productions, Soho Audio, Bloomberg Television, Little Dog Productions, Joetown Inc., Backstreet Edit, Lionheart Films New York, RAI, Phoenix Communications, Oracom Inc., Alchemy Digital, Cammach Associates, VH1/MTV New York, The Jewish Museum New York, Asset Picture New York, NVI, National Recording Studios New York, Swiss Television.

Stephen maintains a full LinkedIn profile which contains over 50 employment references and endorsements.

Stephen is also a member of The National Union of Journalists – membership no. GO927934.