Murray Smith is Professor and Head of Film Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK, where he has taught since 1992. He obtained his MA and PhD in Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 2005-6 he was a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Since 1995 he has been an advisory board member of the Centre for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. His research interests include the psychology of film viewing, and especially the place of emotion in film reception; the philosophy of film, and of art more generally; music and sound design in film; and popular music. He is currently working on the implications of evolutionary theory for film culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His publications include Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema<\/em> (Clarendon, 1995), Film Theory and Philosophy<\/em> (co-edited with Richard Allen) (Clarendon, 1998), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema<\/em> (co-edited with Steve Neale) (Routledge, 1998), Trainspotting<\/em> (British Film Institute, 2002), and Thinking through Cinema <\/em>(co-edited with Tom Wartenberg) (Blackwell, 2006). His essay on sound in David Lynch\u2019s Lost Highway<\/em>, \u2018A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise Part 2,\u2019 appears in Lennard H\u00f8jbjerg and Peter Schepelern and (eds.), Film Style and Story<\/em> (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003).<\/p>\n\n\n\n