Professorship awarded to Virginia Heath

Virginia Heath has been awarded the title Professor of Film. The award is very well deserved and in recognition of Virginia’s significant contribution to her disciplinary specialism.

Virginia Heath is a writer and director working in the fields of both fiction and documentary film. Her research practice is focused on creating a body of distinctive and internationally recognised films and innovative cross platform content which investigate questions of female sexuality, empowerment of marginalised voices, and the conflict between different cultural perceptions of the world. Her work has been screened at international film festivals including Berlin, Cannes, The Hamptons, New York, St Petersburg and has won awards such as ‘Relativity’ – Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival 2002, and has been nominated for the European Film Academy Awards.

Following on from her past work, Virginia Heath wrote and directed the hard-hitting film My Dangerous Loverboy commissioned by the UK Human Trafficking Centre to investigate the hidden issue of the sex trafficking of teenage girls around UK cities. The film had its international premiere at the Atlantic Film Festival, Canada in 2009 and is a key element of the much wider My Dangerous Loverboy online project which won a cross media innovation award from the National Film Board of Canada.

Virginia’s current research project is a 70 minute film and live music performance From Scotland With Love commissioned by Creative Scotland and the BBC for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. It is an artistic collaboration with composer King Creosote who was Mercury Prize nominated for his album with Jon Hopkins, ‘Diamond Mine’. The project will culminate in a major, high profile performance during the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival on 31 July 2014.