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Employment and the Experience of Diasporic Nationalism

Employment and the Experience of Diasporic Nationalism

This project aimed to understand better the experience of being employed by the BBCWS, being trained into its values and into Britishness.

We found that long-standing employees often saw the successive waves of new arrivals as less sophisticated and ‘cosmopolitan’ than themselves and there were certain tensions about some inappropriate behaviours enacted in Bush House. Latterly, the PTV staff have had to rethink their own relationship with Iran as BBCPTV has come under such rhetorical attach by the Islamic Republic.

Project contact: 

Professor Annabelle Sreberny, SOAS, University of London, a.sreberny@soas.ac.uk, 020 7898 4422

    Project members: 

  • Prof Annabelle Sreberny is the Director of the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS and coordinator of Diasporic Nationhood. She spent seven weeks in Tehran in autumn 2008. She has conducted interviews about the use of BBC WS and other external broadcasting channels.

    Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad from the Institute for Ismaili Studies has worked on BBC Persian service and negotiations of identity.

    Melissa Pignatelli was a doctoral student at the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS. She spent three months inside the BBC PTV project, exploring the process of training into BBCness and Britishness.