Dr David Fleming

Senior Lecturer

Communications, Media and Culture University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Dr David Fleming

Contact details

About me

I joined CMC in December 2017 after serving as Associate Professor of Film Philosophy at the University of Nottingham on their Ningbo China campus. Prior to this, I'd won one of the inaugural scholarships marking the launch of the new Film Studies department at the University of St Andrews in 2006. Teaching and worked towards my PhD there felt like quite an accomplishment for a lad who went to what was then referred to as 'the worst school in Scotland.' In a previous strata of life I was an international water polo goalkeeper who played internationally for Scotland and Great Britain, as well as National League clubs in the UK and Australia.

I am the Film and Media BA Programme Director and a Senior Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy).

I am also an editorial board member of the leading diamond open access journal Film-Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press), and at Stirling co-ordinate core modules that include ‘Reading Film & Television,’ and research-led electives such as ‘Global Film as/and Philosophy’ and ‘East and Southeast Asian Cinemas.’ I also guest lecture on modules such as 'Screening Science Fiction,' 'Key Feminist Thinkers,' and 'Small Nations on Screen.'

I would welcome MRes and PhD applications that gravitate around Film and Media Philosophy themes; including race and film; environmental humanities; global cinemas and thought/ethics/event/time; screen and urban media (including cities and cinematicity); science fiction cinema and (the limits of) thought; non-neurotypical thought and image; cinema and ecology/ecosophy; media and animal studies; screen media and the work of landmark thinkers. I would also consider novel projects engaging with digital cinema, experiential ‘4D’ (phenomenologies), materialist/physical philosophy, the Anthropocene/Chthulucene and beyond.

Qualifications

PhD Film Studies, University of St Andrews: 2005-2009 (Full Scholarship).

MLitt (with Distinction) Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen: 2004-2005 (Full AHRB Scholarship).

Master of Arts (with Honours) English and Film Studies, University of Aberdeen [& University of New Mexico]: 2000–2004.

Teaching Qualifications and Memberships

PGCHE Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Nottingham, UK: 2013-2016.

SFELTE, University of Stirling, Scotland 2019

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019 - present, previously Fellow since 2016, and Associate Fellow since 2013).

Consultancy

External Academic Specialist
University of Dundee

External Academic Specialist for University of Dundee, periodic review of UG English/Creative Writing/Film programme (2015-2020).

Education

English and Film Studies (with Honours)
University of Aberdeen

MLitt Visual Culture

Dissertation supervised by Professor Paul Coates

PhD Film Studies (Film-Philosophy)
University of St Andrews

Supervised by David Martin-Jones

PGCHE
University of Nottingham

Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education

External Examiners and Validations

External Examiner
King's College London
External Examiner for King’s College London’s Media Communications and Creative Industries BA

Other Academic Activities

SFELTE (Senior Fellowship)
University of Stirling

Senior Fellowship via The Stirling Framework for Evidencing Learning and Teaching Enhancemen

Visiting Scholar

Visiting Scholar in The Department of Theatre & Film, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (December 2025)

Book Series Editor: Screens, Thinking, Worlds (Edinburgh University Press)
Screens, Thinking, Worlds provides diverse, creative, interdisciplinary, eco-critical and decolonising approaches to global screen media, industries and cultures. The series comprises full monographs, shorter thought-in- process works and edited collections that advance breakthrough concepts or explore paradigm-shifting dimensions.

Film-Philosophy Editorial Board
I sit on the editorial board of the Film-Philosophy journal, an open access peer-reviewed academic journal run out of Edinburgh University Press. Film-Philosophy is a journal covering the technologies/fields/categories related to Visual Arts and Performing Arts (Q1); Philosophy (Q2); Communication (Q3). It is published by Edinburgh University Press. The overall rank of Film-Philosophy is 20817. According to SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), this journal is ranked 0.185. dedicated to the engagement between film studies and philosophy.

University Contribution

●Lead of SGSAH Discipline + Catalyst for Media, Communications, Film & TV

Leading the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities ‘Discipline + Catalyst' required I serve all doctoral researchers working and training in Scotland. The position involved planning and implementing three annual PGR training events including at the summer school while coordinating other members drawn from sixteen Scottish HEIs, industry partners, and external stakeholders. As a member/chair of the SGSAH PhD scholarship selection panel I was tasked with annually evaluating, ranking and selecting from hundreds of applications for AHRC doctoral funding awards alongside panel representatives from other HEIs.

Research themes