Vanessa Jackson is Associate Professor, Enterprise and Employability in the Birmingham Institute of Media and English at Birmingham City University. She teaches practical television skills to undergraduates, including television drama, documentary and studio production. Additionally she is involved in academic research around broadcast history, television production processes and social media communities. Her PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, explored new historiographical opportunities enabled by multimedia online archival practice. At the centre of this research was the Pebble Mill project, an online archive documenting the programme making that went on at BBC Pebble Mill: http://pebblemill.org.

Before joining Birmingham City University in 2008 Jackson was a series producer at BBC Birmingham, making factual and documentary series.