Mr Simon Stanton-Sharma
School of Arts, Media and Creative Technologies
Current positions
Lecturer
Biography
I am stream leader and lecturer at the University of Salford on the MA in Drama Production for TV and Film. I am an award-winning filmmaker and television director with over twenty years experience across scripted, commercials, entertainment and current affairs, mainly at the BBC where I acted as creative lead for BBC global output in the London 2012 Olympics. In 2017 I spent two years launching the BBC’s new Africa service in Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal and over the last 7 years was director of BBC 2’s Newsnight programme.
Areas of Research
My research is situated at the intersection of videographic criticism, decolonial pedagogy, and production practice, with a particular focus on how authorship, editorial structures, and the ‘means of production’ shape cultural output.
A central strand of my work develops from my role as Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded South African Modernism 1880–2020: Decolonising the English Literature A-Level (Follow-on Funding) project. This work explores how curricula and pedagogical practices can be rethought to address structural inequalities in knowledge production and has contributed to ongoing REF2029 impact case study development.
Building on this, I am currently Co-Investigator on Learning Futures: Literatures, Communities and the Sustainability Curriculum, supported by internal Research Development funding. This project develops an interdisciplinary model of the “Sustainable School,” foregrounding the relationship between literature, creativity, and environmental understanding. It focuses on re-rooting knowledge in place and lived experience, positioning local environments as sites of inquiry and interpretation, and is laying the groundwork for a major AHRC funding application in 2027.
Alongside this, my practice-based research explores questions of representation and authorship through videographic and film work. My videographic essay In Search of a Father, which examines media representations of fatherhood, has been accepted for publication in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies. I am also developing You Can’t Get Lost in Jo’burg, a research film and article examining the experiences of female e-hailing drivers in South Africa, addressing issues of gender, race, and precarity within the global platform economy.
My work is informed by earlier research engaging with Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and production, as well as industry experience, including collaboration with documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis on experimental approaches to authorship and editorial control. This has led to a sustained interest in how bias – whether structural, institutional, or creative – operates within media production.
Across these strands, my research seeks to interrogate and disrupt the structural hierarchies embedded within cultural production, contributing to more inclusive, equitable, and critically engaged media practices.
I teach across five L7 film and television modules and lead L7 modules that specialise in media theory and collaboration.
I also lead a L5 module in creative commercial practice.
Qualifications
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PGCAP
2021 - 2022 -
Film and Television Studies
1995 - 1998