John Ellis is Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway University of London. His career has spanned both TV and academia as he produced programmes about cinema and culture for Channel 4 and the BBC between 1982 and 1999 through his company Large Door Productions. His 1982 book 'Visible Fictions' was ground-breaking in its attempt to compare cinema and TV. He has since written 'Documentary: Witness and Self-Revelation' (2011) and 'Seeing Things' (2000).

He is a founding editor of the online open access VIEW: Journal of European Television History and Culture, and chairs Learning on Screen which provides the archival TV service Box of Broadcasts (BoB) to education. His research project 'How Television Used to be Made' on the history of TV technologies can be found at www.adapttvhistory.org.uk