Tuesday 8 July 2014

Salford MA graduate wins high profile film festival award

 
















University of Salford MA Wildlife Documentary Production graduate, Tom Rowland has picked up the award for Best Cinematography at the prestigious Screentest National Student Film Festival for his film, Adapting Anolis. 

Tom’s award adds to the University’s excellent track record for MA Wildlife Documentary students, as he joins the likes of Salford alumni Tania Escobar and Amber Eames who in previous years have picked up awards for Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the glitzy ceremony held at London’s South Bank.
His film documents the many varieties of Anolis lizards that dominate Cuba’s rainforests and their various adaptations that make them suitable for life high in the trees, in the undergrowth or by water, and that also make them one of the planet’s most diverse and evolutionary significant animals.
To make Adapting Anolis, Tom spent a month on location in Cuba collecting footage in the dense jungles as well as at the Cuban film school Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV, where he and production co-ordinator Ivan Medina set up a special lab that replicated the rainforest environment. It was here that he was able to spend time getting up close with the lizards, filming them with cutting edge macro and long lens techniques.

Of winning the award, Tom says; “I was pretty taken back and was not at all expecting it - especially since the competing films in my category were of such a high standard. You wouldn’t have thought they were student films at all.

“I was also nominated for Best Film and Best Documentary – as this was the only wildlife film in the festival, to get nominated was also a real honour. It was great to be flying the natural history flag alongside the many great fiction based films and human-based documentaries.”

He has been involved in media production and drama since the age of 10, always knowing he wanted to pursue a career in television. That, coupled with his keen interest in biology and animals, meant that working on wildlife documentaries was an easy career decision to make.
When deciding where to complete his Master’s degree, Tom had already heard good things about the University of Salford, and once he saw the facilities on offer at the MediaCity UK campus, he was sold.

As well as the world class facilities, Tom also puts his award down to being able to work with world-renowned wildlife film professionals such as Paul Reddish, who he says gave him “a real insight into the industry, the skills needed to break into it and the knowledge of how to make a good wildlife film.”

Not one to rest on his laurels, Tom is continuing to travel the world as a wildlife documentary maker, working as a researcher for National Geographic’s Wild Brazil as well as making films for the ‘Save the Rhino’ charity in South Africa.

Tuesday 1 July 2014

The Regional Studies Association - Early Career Conference 2014


ICOSS, University of Sheffield, UK, Thursday and Friday 30-31 October 2014


Call for Papers

Abstract submission deadline: Friday 29 August, 2014


The Regional Studies Association encourages submissions of abstracts to our annual Early Career conference, to be held in Sheffield in October 2014. This exciting conference, sponsored by new open access journal Regional Studies, Regional Science, will provide PhD students and early career researchers with the opportunity to network, collaborate and socialise with others working in regional studies and science. The objective of the conference is bring together students and early career researchers to present and debate their work in a welcoming and stimulating environment, with a view to getting invaluable feedback and new ideas and learning more about how and where to publish their research results. One session will focus on how the publishing environment is changing and the new opportunities it creates. A number of distinguished Plenary Speakers will be in attendance, in addition to the Editors-in-Chief of Regional Studies, Regional Science. Participants working in the following areas are invited to submit an abstract, though we welcome all submissions with a regional studies or regional science focus.



· Urban and regional development and policy
· New challenges in urban planning
· New economic geography
· Big data and regions
· Climate change and sustainability
· Urban and regional governance
· Politics and territory
· Innovation and knowledge
· Mega-regions
· City regions
· Regional mapping and visualisation
· Clusters and smart specialisation
· Labour markets and migration
· Spatial justice


Abstract submission will be available online from April 2014. For more information and updates on this event, please go to
Conference Format
The conference will begin and end with a series of plenary lectures. In between these sessions a number of parallel workshop tracks will be held, all within the ICOSS building at the heart of the University of Sheffield’s city centre campus. Papers will be grouped thematically after submission. We will also hold a special ‘how to get published’ session with journal editors and devote one session to more innovative presentation formats.
Information About the Venue
The conference venue is 300m from the nearest tram stop, which connects directly to Sheffield train station (accessible directly from most major UK cities). For international visitors, there is a direct train from Manchester Airport to Sheffield. There are many bars, restaurants and hotels within walking distance of the venue.