| Thomas O'Regan | |
| Birth Date: | 10 May 1956 |
| Birth Place: | , Queensland |
| Citizenship: | Australian |
| Fields: | Cultural studies, Media studies |
| Alma Mater: | Griffith University (B.A., 1977), (B.A. Hons 1978) (P.H.D. 1986) |
Thomas ("Tom") Andrew O'Regan (10 May 1956 − 17 July 2020[1]) was a Professor of Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Queensland.
Tom O'Regan was born in, Queensland, Australia, in 1956. He was in the first intake of students to Griffith University[2] in Brisbane in 1975, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1978 and a PhD in 1986. He has taught at Murdoch University, Griffith University, and, since 2004, had been at the University of Queensland before his death. At the time of his death, O'Regan had been an Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts from 2010 to 2020. He had also been Head of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History Ian Russell, 2005–2008, Director of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy (Griffith University 1999–2002) and Director of the Centre for Research in Culture and Communication (Murdoch University, 1996–1998).[3] He was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2002 and was, from 2002 to 2003, Australia's UNESCO-Orbicom Professor of Communication.[4]
O'Regan was integrally involved in developing cultural policy studies, cultural studies and screen studies in Australia. He co-founded the journal and was an editor from 1987–1994. His publications reflected his abiding interest in the various ways and byways of film, television and cultural sectors. Prior to his death, he was researching trajectories of film and television in Australia over the 1990s and 2000s, international film and television production, and the history of audience measurement in Australia, UK and the US.[5]
His most notable contribution over the 2000s has been to the documentation and understanding of what has been variously called, international production, "runaway production", and "Global Hollywood". This work is marked by its attention to the places and spaces in which such production occurs including the film studio and policy infrastructures required to support it. O'Regan co-wrote with Ben Goldsmith a major report, Cinema Cities, Media Cities: the Contemporary International Studio Complex for the Australian Film Commission (2003) with this work being taken further in The Film Studio: Film Production in the Global Economy (2005). Their 2010 book, Local Hollywood: Global Film Production and the Gold Coast, co-authored with Susan Ward, used the Gold Coast in Australia to document how places outside of Los Angeles had proactively engaged with Hollywood to co-create the contemporary system of globally dispersed.
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