Brendan Kredell and Mark Shiel are co-directors of
Media Urbanism, a limited liability company incorporated in Dublin, Ireland and Detroit, Michigan. We are media analysts with a combined forty years’ experience in analyzing global cinema, television, and online media, creative industries, creative cities, and the cultural economy.
Brendan grew up in New Jersey before completing his undergraduate degree in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and working briefly as an elementary schoolteacher in Washington DC. Moving into the cultural sector, he was a public programmer at the Chicago History Museum before completing an MA and PhD at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, respectively, where he specialized in media industries and urban redevelopment. Since then, following stints as a Fulbright fellow at the University of Toronto Cities Center and teaching Communications at the University of Calgary, he has emerged as an expert analyst of media audiences and media consumption in cities, their data visualization and mapping. He has published a dozen articles and co-edited the journal Mediapolis and the books Film Festivals (2016) and the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Media and the City. Currently based in the suburbs of Detroit Michigan, he is an Associate Professor of Film Studies and Production at Oakland University, where he teaches documentary film.
Mark has published five books on media and cities. His most recent monograph, Hollywood Cinema and the Real Los Angeles, won the Urban Communication Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Award for Best Book in 2014, while his other publications have focused on Dublin, Paris, Rome, and New York. He is widely recognized for his expertise on urbanization and media in the United States and Europe, frequently giving keynotes and lectures at prestigious institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he studied literature and theatre at Trinity College Dublin in the early 1990s before switching disciplines to complete a PhD on cinema, geography, and landscape at the University of London. Since then, his projects and methods have branched into cartography, data visualization, and events programming. He is currently Professor of Media and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London. He frequently collaborates with media and arts organizations, including most recently the British Film Institute and Getty Research Institute.
Depending on the nature of a project, Media Urbanism can draft in a variety of additional experts, including architects, planners, geographers, designers, and technologists. Please contact us for further details.