Murray Smith, Professor of Film at the School of Arts, has been shortlisted for Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year at the Times Higher Education (THE) Awards 2020.
The winners will be announced during a virtual ceremony on 26 November 2020. Registration to watch the virtual ceremony is welcome to anyone interested across the University.
Professor Smith is one of only two Humanities researchers shortlisted for the Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year award. He has been recognised for mentoring and helping several generations of doctoral students to flourish over a period of 25 years. Many of these students were initially graduate students at Kent and later have become successful academics taking up positions in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Pakistan, Portugal, and the UK.
At Kent, these young researchers were members of and benefitted from the Aesthetics Research Centre, an internationally recognised centre for the interdisciplinary study of the philosophy of art and aesthetics, founded and directed by Professor Smith with colleagues in the School of Arts.
Professor Smith has also been central to the emergence of cognitive film theory as a research programme, as a founder and later president (2014-17) of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. Although noted for the breadth of his interests and openness as a supervisor, it is largely through the achievements of his supervisees that ‘cognitivism’ has achieved such success within film studies and philosophical aesthetics.
Earlier this year, Professor Smith was awarded the Postgraduate Supervisor prize at Kent’s Graduate School Prizes 2020.