THE CULTURES OF EARLY TELEVISION

The Cultures of Early Television, a two-day University of Westminster conference about television before the Second World War in Britain, continental Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union. With presentations, panels and screenings of rare archival material, the event marks the centenary of the first British public presentation of what John Logie Baird called “true television”, which took place in London in early 1926.

The conference brings together scholars and archivists from Britain, Europe and North America to explore imaginings and understandings of early television, and its productions and people, rather than its technologies, which has been the dominant construction of this history to date

One central focus will be early television’s intermedial entanglements with the radio, cinema, theatre, dance and visual arts of the first half of the twentieth century. Parallel to this will be a concern to develop a transnational dialogue for a field that has largely developed along national lines.

The conference should be of interest not only to media historians, but also to those concerned with mid-century culture more broadly, to social historians, and to those with a general interest in the development of television.

Keynote speakers:

André Lange, editor of the website "Histoire de la télévision (et de quelques autres médias) histv.net".

Anne-Katrin Weber, University of Basel, author of Television before TV (2022)

Other confirmed speakers:

William Boddy, CUNY, Baruch College

Oliver Botar, University of Manitoba

Doron Galili, Stockholm University

Angelina Lucento, Duke University

Luke McKernan, author of Let Me Dream Again (2026)

Donald McLean, author of Restoring Baird’s Image (2000)

Jamie Medhurst, Aberystwyth University

Kate Murphy, Bournemouth University

Danielle Simon, Middlebury College

Simon Vaughan, Alexandra Palace Television Society

Convenor: John Wyver, University of Westminster, [email protected]

Thanks to the generous support of The British Academy, registration for the conference is free

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Host or Publisher College of Design, Creative & Digital Industries, University of Westminster