From narratives of value to valuable algorithms: a decade of promotional screen culture in the UK seen by machine

Award details

This project aims to bring to light the collection of advertisements broadcast across all main commercial public service broadcast channels in the UK since 2016. The analysis will be carried out through a computational humanities approach that can make these moving images an open record of the transformation of social and economic values in the UK’s recent history.

This project will be jointly supervised by:

Dr Daniel Chávez Heras, KCL (first supervisor)

Dr Astrid Van den Bossche, KCL

Stephen McConnachie, Head of Data & Digital Preservation, BFI

• The student will be expected to spend time at both King's College London and the BFI sites, as well as to become part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.
• The studentship can be undertaken either full or part-time.
• We encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates from different backgrounds and at different career stages.
• Students should have a Master's degree in a relevant subject or be able to demonstrate relevant equivalent experience in a professional setting such as screen heritage or cultural informatics.
• The studentship is open to both home and international applicants. See details below.

Project Overview

Over the past decades, many collections of moving images have been digitised, catalogued and preserved in various formats and at different scales in numerous archives around the world. The BFI National Archive is one of the most important collections of film and television globally. It holds a living and expanding record of the evolution of the moving image over the past 90 years, including digital-born content across major television channels in the UK. Since the 1980s, the BFI has been capturing and preserving off-air television from UK public service broadcasters, including all advertisements broadcast across all main commercial PSB channels since 2016. Advertisements are the “literature of economics”, and in aggregate these TV adverts are likely to be the largest collection of its kind worldwide and one of the most significant records of consumer culture in the UK over the past decade.

However, this collection is fragmented and scattered across thousands of hours of digital video, and despite its cultural significance it remains entirely undocumented and therefore inaccessible. This project aims to (i) define this wealth of material into a usable collection; (ii) develop a systematic understanding of the collection as a record of consumer culture in the UK; and (iii) create the kind of documentation that opens this resource for open research across disciplines and to wider audiences.

The challenge to bring such collection to light is technical as much as a conceptual ― it requires the student to critically reimagine and reshape advertisement records as computational objects. To tackle this challenge, the project adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines interpretive frameworks in film, television and media scholarship with advanced methods in computational humanities to design a “computational lens” with which to machine-see the archive. The aim is not only to identify, extract, and catalogue the adverts, but also to understand them in context as an evolving record of social norms, values and relations, as they are expressed in UK screen culture.

The student will have the opportunity to bring their own focus to identify suitable angles to explore this collection through appropriate sampling. At the same time, the new methods and tools developed for this project will impact the wider heritage sector, insofar as its institutions and preservation practices increasingly rely on large collections of highly fragmented peripheral visual records. Drawing out patterns that are useful to humanities inquiry from large collections of images will have wide applicability for visual cultural heritage beyond the specificity of consumer culture.

Core research questions:

• How has promotional screen culture in Britain changed over the past decade?
• How to access, understand, and analyse this transformation in screen culture from a computational perspective?

Research with the BFI

This research studentship is allocated by the AHRC to the BFI. The successful student will be expected to spend time carrying out research and gaining relevant experience at the BFI National Archive in Berkhamsted and the BFI’s London sites, as appropriate, as part of the studentship.

The successful candidate will be encouraged to participate in professional development events and activities organised for all Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students who are registered with different universities and studying with cultural and heritage organisations across the UK. These activities are organised by a coordination team based at the V&A and are designed to provide CDP researchers with the knowledge, networks and skills to thrive in their future careers.

Training and support

The beneficiary of this studentship will be able to pursue careers in academia and the screen sector; in cultural heritage, creative industries, or a combination of the two. Examples of areas of employment available to a student with the profile acquired through this doctorate are Data and Moving Image Preservation, Cultural Data Analyst/Steward, Data and Insights for cultural organisations; R&D in digital and computational technologies for the screen sector.

To give the student the knowledge and skills needed to be competitive in these areas, a competency audit will be conducted based on the European Competence Framework for Researchers (ResearchComp). Based on this audit, we will draft a specific training plan to develop the skills needed to succeed in this studentship. The exact plan will be tailored to actual student needs, but it is expected that activities will include a combination of formal and self-guided training, including auditing modules offered by the college, ad doc training through King’s e-Research, and on-demand research skills training from the college’s doctoral development provision.

Besides skills training, emphasis will be placed in three core competencies: (i) conducting interdisciplinary research & participating in the publication process; (ii) creating inter-institutional networks; and (iii) building mentor-mentee relationships. By developing these competencies during the studentship, this project aims to build resilience and enable the student to establish a career in or outside of academia.

Award value

CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 48 months (4 years) or part-time equivalent up to a maximum of 8 years.

The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home fee. Research Councils UK Indicative fee level for 2025/2026 is £5,006. Students with an ‘overseas’ fee status are welcome to apply. If successful, King’s College London will waive the difference between home and international fee rates for the selected international student. The student will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD.

The award pays an annual stipend for all students, both home and international students. Note that this stipend is tax free, and is the equivalent of an annual salary, enabling the student to pay living costs. The UKRI Minimum Doctoral Stipend for 2025-2026 is £20,780 plus London Weighting of £2000/year. There is also a CDP maintenance payment of £600 per year. More details can be found on the UKRI website.

The successful candidate is eligible to receive an additional travel and related expenses grant from the BFI, worth up to £500 per year for the duration of the project (equivalent of 4 years if studied part-time).

Eligibility criteria

• This studentship is open to both Home and International applicants.
• To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria: be a UK or Irish National (meeting residency requirements), or have settled status, or have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or have indefinite leave to remain or enter.
• Further guidance can be found here based on revisions to Training Grant Terms and Conditions for projects starting in October 2025 - Policy statement: review of the training grant conditions – UKRI
• International students are eligible to receive the full award for maintenance as are home students. King’s College London will cover the difference between the home rate tuition fees offered by AHRC through this award, and the international rates published by the university. See this page for more information on tuition fees for a research degree in Digital Humanities: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/areas/digital-humanities-research-mphil-phd
• This is a fully funded studentship for home or international applicants. We want to encourage the widest range of potential students to study for a CDP studentship and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds to apply. We particularly welcome applications from people of Global Majority backgrounds with mixed disciplinary and technical backgrounds, and/or mature students already working in technical fields who are considering a return to academia, as these groups are currently under-represented at this level in this area.
• Applicants with disabilities can request reasonable adjustments in the recruitment process. These will be specific to the type of disability and may include:
  • Notices for evaluators that accompany application packs
  • Time adjustments for interviews
  • Opportunity to speak with contacts at KCL regarding institutional support systems (e.g. mobility, sight loss, neurodiversity)
• To request reasonable adjustments, please contact Dr Paolo Ruffino ruffino@kcl.ac.uk
• Applicants should ideally have or expect to receive a relevant Master’s-level qualification in a relevant subject, for example Digital or Computational Humanities, Film and Media Studies, Heritage and Conservation Science, or be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting such as Screen Heritage or Cultural Informatics. This studentship is particularly well suited to applicants with mixed or interdisciplinary backgrounds, for examples arts and humanities students who are technically oriented and want to develop their computational abilities, or screen sector professionals who are critically oriented and want to develop their academic profile.
• Applicants must be able to demonstrate an interest in the screen sector as well as potential and enthusiasm for developing skills more widely in related areas, including Interdisciplinary Computing, Computational Humanities, and Cultural Informatics.
• As a collaborative award, students will be expected to spend time at both the University and the BFI.

Award conditions

All applicants must meet UKRI terms and conditions for funding. See:

https://www.ukri.org/funding/information-for-award-holders/grant-terms-and-conditions/

Application process

Applicants must complete and submit an online admissions application via the admissions portal by midnight (23:59 GMT), 13 June 2025. Early submissions are encouraged, as applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The student will start on October 1st, 2025.

Applicants from global majority backgrounds are strongly encouraged to get in touch as early as possible to discuss their applications in order to allow enough time to prepare their submission. Please email Dr. Daniel Chávez Heras and include the following:

• A paragraph describing your background and interest in the studentship.
• Your CV

To officially apply, please use the King’s Apply online application system, following these guidelines:

On the ‘Choosing a programme’ page, please select “Digital Humanities MPhil/PhD”.

In your application, you will be asked to include:

• Academic Transcripts
• Details of your qualifications
• Details of previous employment
• A personal statement describing why you wish to apply for this project. Please use this template to write your personal statement, and include it as an attachment rather than using the text box.
• Academic References ― if the applicant is relying on their referees to submit a reference directly to the College after they have submitted their admissions application, then the applicant must ensure that (1) their chosen referee is made aware of the application deadline, and (2) that the reference needs to be sent from an institutional email address. References must be received by the deadline for the applicant to be eligible.

In the Funding section, please tick box 5 ‘I am applying for a funding award or scholarship administered by King’s College London’ and type the code BFI-DDH2025 into the ‘Award Scheme Code or Name’ box.

Make sure you quote the reference exactly as it appears above. Also, please note there is no need to complete the Research Proposal section in your application as the project has already been set. For more information about the project or studentship, please contact the any of the KCL supervisors.

More information about the department and the programme is available at the departmental prospectus page: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/areas/digital-humanities-research-mphil-phd

If you have any queries regarding the programme or the application process, please contact Dr Paolo Ruffino paolo.ruffino@kcl.ac.uk

We ask all applicants to complete a voluntary EDI monitoring form here. All responses are anonymous.

Selection process

Applicants will be shortlisted based on the documents submitted and follow-up conversations. If shortlisted, candidates will be interviewed by a panel of KCL & BFI experts.

Interviews will take place on 23-24 June 2025.

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

Contact Details

Dr Daniel Chávez Heras, daniel.chavez@kcl.ac.uk