Dr Allan Thomas

In addition to their professional specialisations, students in the Bachelor of Communication program complete a series of 5 to 6 courses in one of the following areas of study within Contextual Studies: Asian Media and Culture, Cinema Studies, Literature and Philosophy, and Politics, Economies, Communication.

He also teaches Cinema Studies, including courses such as Histories of Film Theory, and True Lies: Documentary Studies, as well as Research in Contextual Studies, which is an optional individual research course available to students from all four majors. Allan has also at various times taught across 1st to 3rd year level courses in the Media program at RMIT, and into the Mass Communication program run by RMIT at the Singapore Institute of Management.

He worked on the selection panels for short fiction and short documentary for the Melbourne International Film Festival for several years, and was a regular film reviewer for the Melbourne based journal Eureka Street.

Research and scholarship

Allan's research interests include Film Theory and Continental Philosophy, Documentary Film Theory, New Media Theory, the intersections of critical and creative research, practical pedagogy, and the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Allan is completing a PhD in Cinema Studies at RMIT University, focusing on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s writing on cinema.

Selected Research Activity

’How to Escape the Dialectic, or, The Cinematographic Illusion of Philosophy.’Conference paper presented at the 2nd Annual Deleuze Studies Conference, Cologne, Germany, August 9th–11^th, 2009

’Paisà’. Issue 51, 2009.

’Fascism, Irrationalism and Creative Evolution, or, Deleuze, Running Away.’ Bulletin de la SociétéAméricaine de Philosophie de Langue Française Vol.15, No. 2, Fall 2005, pp1–27

’Bilder Der Welt Und Inschrift Des Krieges’ in Stuff It: The Video Essay in the Digital Age (ed. Ursula Bieman), Edition Voldemeer Zürich / Springer Wien New York, 2003, pp112–115

’The Sheltering Sky and the Sorrow of Memory: Looking at Bertolucci through Deleuze’ , Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1998, pp 196–203.

The Word Made Flesh: Viscerality and Textuality in David Fincher’s SEVEN’, Metro, No.109, 1997, pp 32–34

’Camping Outback: Landscape, Masculinity and Performance in THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT’, Continuum, Vol.10, No.2, 1996, pp 97–110.

Accomplishments and achievements

Allan received an RMIT Teaching Award in 2008, in the Higher Education, Humanities and the Arts category: 'For excellence in fostering student centred learning through promoting discovery based independent learning in Media and Cinema Studies'.

He was also a member of the RMIT Media teaching team which received an Australian Learning and Teaching citation in 2008 'For excellence in applying process based pedagogies that utilize powerful new media technologies to enhance the student experience of learning and for innovative assessment practice'.

The same teaching team also received a citation in the 2007 RMIT Teaching Awards, for 'Innovation in Curricula, Learning & Teaching'.

• BA (Hons)

• Grad Dip Hum Latrobe

• Grad Dip Film and Television VCA