Sam Fray manages the Beyond Brontës programme, that has been established to address the lack of diversity in the screen industries by supporting young people in the Bradford District and Leeds City Region to develop the skills, confidence and connections to enter and succeed in the screen industries.

Mita Lad

Mita is an Associate Lecturer at Middlesex University and chair of the MeCCSA Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Network. She is currently finishing off her PhD at Edge Hill University. The topic of which examines how audiences look at and engage with television; with a particular focus on Indian Hindu diasporic women in the UK. Mita has a Masters in Film from the University of Amsterdam and has extensive experience of teaching both in the UK and abroad.

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Dr Nour Halabi

Nour Halabi is a Lecturer of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds and the Vice-Chair of the MeCCSA Race Network. She is a former senior resident fellow at the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her interdisciplinary research examines the interactions between mobility, social movements and global media. Recent publications include; The Spatial Politics of the Syrian Revolution; in Middle East Critique (2019), “If These Walls Could Speak: Borders and Walls as Communicative Devices,” in Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (Peter Lang, 2018); and “The Contingency of Meaning to the Party of God: Carnivalesque Humor in Revolutionary Times” in The International Journal of Communication (2017). She received her doctorate from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and her Masters from The London School of Economics.

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Jenessa Williams

Jenessa Williams is a Media & Communications PhD student (University of Leeds), freelance journalist and the editor of Pennycress, a zine designed to celebrate Creatives of Colour in the North of England. Her work has been published by the likes of Gal-Dem, Pride, Readers Digest, NME and more, covering everything from race and gender through to music and fashion. Her research revolves around music fandom in the #MeToo era, exploring fan relationships with problematic artists, with considerations of race, gender and musical genre.

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Dr Kulraj Phullar

Kulraj Phullar completed his PhD in Film Studies at King’s College London. His current research focuses on colonial and diasporic histories in the British context, including case studies of honour violence, virginity testing and anti-racist activism, and wider issues of race and racism in Film Studies. He has taught at King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London and Royal Holloway University of London.

Eszter Hargittai is Professor in the Institute of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich where she heads the Internet Use and Society division. She is also Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

Hargittai's research focuses on the social and policy implications of digital media with a particular interest in how differences in people's Web-use skills influence what they do online. Her work has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association and the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. In 2010, the International Communication Association selected her to receive its Outstanding Young Scholar Award.

In addition to her academic articles, her work has also been featured in numerous popular media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, CNNfn, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and many others. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Markle Foundation, the Dan David Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Nokia, Google, and Facebook, among others.

Hargittai is editor of «Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have» (University of Michigan Press 2009), which presents a rare behind-the-scenes look at doing empirical social science research and co-editor (with Christian Sandvig) of Digital Research Confidential (The MIT Press, 2015), which presents more behind-the-scenes experiences of social scientific research in the digital age. She is currently editing a third methods volume forthcoming with Columbia University Press.

She writes an academic career advice column at Inside Higher Ed called Ph.Do.

Ivan Sigal is the Executive Director of Global Voices (www.globalvoicesonline.org), a non-profit online global citizens’ media initiative with expertise in supporting developing world initiatives of citizen media. He writes and speaks about media, conflict, networked societies, development and humanitarian disasters. He designs and creates media projects around the world, with a focus on networked communities.