Simon Aeppli

Simon Aeppli serves as Senior Lecturer in Film Production at the University for the Creative Arts since October 2009 while concurrently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy at an institution's Doctoral College School of Humanities and Social Science. His dual roles bridge academic instruction and practice-based research in film production.

His doctoral project Operation Bogeyman: The Folk Horror Landscape of 1970's Northern Ireland investigates the Information Policy Unit's (IPU) disinformation campaigns during the early 1970s, specifically analyzing orchestrated 'Satanic Panic' rituals designed to weaponize local folklore and religious tensions. He examines how IPU head Colin Wallace functioned as a real-time screenwriter, staging black masses at myth-steeped locations and leaking fabricated reports to newspapers to induce terror. This research traces Wallace's interventions across Northern Ireland's landscape through archival materials, contemporary footage, and reconstructions.

Key research domains include folk horror as historical methodology, documentary film as investigative practice, Northern Irish socio-political history, 1970s counterinsurgency tactics, and hauntology. His work synthesizes film theory with historical analysis to produce a 50-90 minute essay film for festival distribution, interrogating how state-engineered horror narratives persist in cultural memory five decades later.