STANDISH, Isolde

 

Degree

Bachelor of Arts (Humanities & Social Sciences)

Graduation year

1983

Current position

Reader in Film and Media Studies

Employer

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

What are some of your career highlights?

  • Being awarded a two year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship in 2014 to complete my latest book project on the Japanese filmmaker Oshima Nagisa  - Oshima Nagisa: a Politics of Cinema.
  • Watching my former PhD students publish and build their careers.
  • Living, working and studying in Japan and Korea.
  • Completing my Bachelor of Arts degree at Ballarat and then going on to the PhD at SOAS (London

What are your strongest memories while you were studying at the University?

  • The Ballarat College of Advanced Education (BCAE), as it was known, gave me the theoretical and discipline specific grounding without which I would not have been able to complete the PhD.  Going on to study at major universities in London, Tokyo and Seoul one realised the significance and value of the foundation I had received at the BCAE.
  • I was particularly fortunate to arrive at the BCAE in 1980.  This was an enlightened period, when access to education was seen as a right and not something to be purchased.  The Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme had been implemented and provided free fees and a small, but adequate, living allowance.  I was extremely fortunate to arrive in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences when it was headed by Frank Hurley and a team of lecturers that included Isobel Dowling, Ruan Maud and Dennis Price, all of whom had a significant impact on my intellectual development, for which I am most grateful.

Describe the most enjoyable and challenging aspects of your job

  • I particularly like working with the post-graduate students as they are fewer in number and one can work with them in small groups.  In this way, one can try to instil an ethos of cooperation and collaboration rather than the competitive individualism increasingly being promoted in the university sector. 
  • Writing and publishing are very satisfying.

Do you have advice about life after study?

I find myself at a loss how to answer this at a time when students are now graduating with the burden of debt, when I was so fortunate to go through the system, in the first instance, with TEAS and then with scholarships.

In one sentence what words of wisdom would you pass on to students

To remain true to yourself and your beliefs.