معرفی
Dr. Nicolas Pillai is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin (UCD), where he plays a key leadership role as academic lead for the €10 million Creative Futures Academy (CFA). He is actively involved in research, teaching, and creative practice, with strong collaborations across institutions including NCAD, IADT, RTÉ, and the British Film Institute.
His educational background includes a BA (Hons), MRes, and PhD from the University of Warwick, and a Certificate in Creative Use of Archives from IADT. His research is highly interdisciplinary, focusing on the mediation of jazz in film and television, archival loss, creative labor, and comics as cultural criticism.
Dr. Pillai’s research has been recognized as 'world-leading' in the UK’s 2018 Research Excellence Framework. He led the AHRC-funded project Jazz on BBC-TV 1960–1969, which combined archival, ethnographic, and practice-based methods, culminating in the award-winning BBC Four documentary Jazz 625 Live: For One Night Only, winner of Best Music Programme at the 2020 Broadcast Awards. His monograph Jazz as Visual Language is a seminal contribution to the field. He is currently developing a book on Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and a play on Orson Welles and the Gate Theatre, and editing a volume on Miles Davis for Oxford University Press.
His recent publications span journals like Jazz Research Journal, Journal of Popular Television, and Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, with key themes including jazz television, re-enactment, music documentaries, and comics as criticism. The body of work reflects a consistent engagement with media representation, historical recovery, and creative research methodologies.
- Best Music Programme, 2020 Broadcast Awards
Dr. Pillai has supervised no named students in the provided text, but he mentors through creative modules and research projects. His grants include a £170,000 AHRC Early Career Research Leadership Fellowship. He served as Managing Editor of Jazz Research Journal, where he advanced ethical standards and editorial diversity.
He leads and coordinates major teaching modules such as Writing for Screen, Producing Music, Film & Drama, and Creative Approaches to Academic Research, often in partnership with UCD Special Collections, the National Folklore Archive, and industry bodies like RTÉ and the Dublin International Film Festival. His pedagogy emphasizes creative outputs as scholarly practice.
