Professor Colin Seymour-Ure

Lecturer 1965, Professor 1980-2002, School of Politics and International Relations. Dean of Social Sciences 1978-81. Eliot College 1965, Rutherford from 1966

Professor Seymour-Ure joined the School of Politics and International Relations at its foundation in 1965 and started the first course in the UK on politics and mass media. His daughter was the first baby born after the University opened.

His publications cover the role of the press and broadcasting in a wide range of issues and institutions: Downing Street and White House news management; election campaigns; images of Tony Blair and John Major in the Sun and Daily Mirror; press partisanship; the power of media barons; media policy; political rumours. He wrote the biography of the great cartoonist David Low and helped the British Cartoon Archive, founded by Dr Graham Thomas, prosper.

Professor Seymour-Ure was a Council member of the Hansard Society and Chairman of the Study of Parliament Group, made up of parliamentary staff and academics. In the 1970s, he spent two years with a Government Press Commission. Later, he worked at Harvard and in Washington, Australia and Canada. For six years he chaired the Independent Television Commission's committee responsible for advising on ITV's advertising rules. He has been an Emeritus Professor since 2002.