Ramon Lobato

Ramon Lobato is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at the Swinburne Institute.

His primary research area is audiovisual distribution, with a focus on informal and pirate networks. His forthcoming book, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution (British Film Institute, 2012), examines how film circulates - both legally and illegally - in sites across the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Americas.

Ramon has recently been awarded an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship as part of the ARC Discovery project Informal Media Economies, with Julian Thomas, Stuart Cunningham, and Dan Hunter. This four-year project examines the interactions between formal and informal circuits in film, television and online media.

His articles on media industries, cultural policy, intellectual property and the creative economy and other topics have been published in International Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, Media International Australia, Studies in Australasian Cinema, Continuum, Metro, Camera Obscura and New Review of Film and Television.

Ramon is co-editor of the forthcoming book Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives (Routledge, 2012; with Julian Thomas, Dan Hunter and Megan Richardson). Other work in progress includes articles on media street markets, film economics, and copyright enforcement.

Ramon convenes the third-year subject Cinema Studies (HACM312). Prior to coming to Swinburne, he taught cultural studies, media studies and global studies at Melbourne University and RMIT, and worked as a freelance writer and editor.

Teaching

Cinema Studies (HALM312)

Research Interests

Audiovisual distribution
Film and music industries
Media geography
Intellectual property
Piracy
Media and cultural policy
Informal economies
Transnational cultures
Cultural theory

Publications Include

Shadow Economies of Cinema. London: British Film Institute/Palgrave, 2012.

The business of anti-piracy: New zones of enterprise in the copyright wars. International Journal of Communication, forthcoming 2011. (with Julian Thomas)

Constructing the pirate audience: On free culture, cyber-libertarianism, and popular copyright critique. Media International Australia (2011) 139: 113-124.

Communication networks, cities and the informal economy.Cultures and globalization, vol 5: Cultural policy and governance in a new metropolitan age. Eds. H. K. Anheier and Y. Raj Isar. London: Sage, 2012.

Rethinking genre studies through distribution analysis: Issues in international horror movie circuits. New Review of Film and Television Studies 9 (2): 188-203. (with Mark Ryan)

Histories of user-generated content: Between formal and informal economies. International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 899-914. (with Julian Thomas and Dan Hunter)

Creative industries and informal economies: Lessons from Nollywood. International Journal of Cultural Studies 13 (4): 337-354.

The politics of digital distribution: Exclusionary structures in online cinema.Studies in Australasian Cinema 3 (2): 167-178.

The six faces of piracy: Global media distribution from below. The business of entertainment, volume 1: The movies, ed. Robert Sickels. Westport: Praeger, 2008. 15-36.

Awards and Grants

ARC Discovery (DP110101455) Informal Media Economies, with Julian Thomas, Stuart Cunningham, and Dan Hunter
Postgraduate Supervision

James Meese, "Copyright and the political subject"