Murat Akser is a Lecturer and Course Director in Cinematic Arts in the School of Arts and Humanities, Ulster University. Previously he served as a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, the Chair of the New Media Department, and the Founding Director of the Cinema and Television MA program at Kadir Has University Istanbul, Turkey. He received his MA degree in Film and his PhD in Communication and Culture from York University, Canada. Dr. Akser has been lecturing in film, media and culture since 1997 at different HE institutions including Bosphorus U., York U., Ryerson U. University of Toronto, KHU and Ulster University. He works extensively on film genre storytelling, independent cnema and film parody, and has recently published a book-length studies on cinema and media, such as New Cinema, New Media: Reinventing Turkish Cinema and Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey. Murat Akser is also a practicing filmmaker with experience in Toronto and Northern Ireland film industry as a cinematographer, editor, screenwriter and director. His feature screenplay, Rise and Fall, has been accepted to Sundance Screenwriter's Lab in 2014 and his most recent film The Gift won Best International Short FIlm at Dublin Silk Road International Film Festival. For more information on his film work please visit: Murat Akser Film Work. Dr. Akser is a member of International Cinematographers Guild, Academy of Canadian Film and Television and Executive Board Member of European Communication Association.

Murat's research focuses on independent filmmaking practices, particularly new cinemas like Dogme, American independent cinema and New Turkish cinema. He also studies film genre writing and intertextuality.  His most recent work examines film parody, Turkish indie filmmaking practices and alternative media production. Dr. Akser is a member of these scholarly associations:

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) / Network for European Cinema Studies (NECS) / European Communication Research Association (ECREA) / International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) / International Communication Association (ICA)

Murat currently supervises the following PhD projects:

• John Deery: Alternative Paradigm for Mental Health in Film
• Hamideh Javadi: Feminist Diasporic Video Art in the Middle East
• Kevin Gaffney: Queer Filmmaking: Search for a new homonormativity.
• John Kavanagh: Modern Mythologies,80s Nostalgia and the Horror Revival Period of the 21st Century
• Gerard Gibson: Crossing the Spectral Threshold: Moving-Image Horror in Virtual Reality
• Nicole Jabre: Branditude/Branding Attitude: Can design be a catalyst for change?
• Suphi Keskin: National vs transnational Cinemas
• Tara Hegarty: Film Practice

Murat currently teaches the following modules:

Web Series; Visual Storytelling; Independent Film, World Cinemas, Introduction to Film Art.

Murat previously taught the following modules:

Dramatic Short; Feature Screenwriting; Editing; Introduction to Filmmaking; Theories of Media and Communication; Film, Television and Society.