Rate My Professor Craig Hight

Associate Professor Craig Hight serves in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he was appointed Associate Professor in Creative Industries in January 2016. Holding a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Waikato, New Zealand, Hight previously worked at the same institution. His cross-disciplinary research, informed by backgrounds in computer science, political science, and media studies, focuses on media practices, textual construction, and audience reception. Key research specializations include audience research, digital documentary, documentary theory, mockumentary, practice-led research, software literacy, software studies, screen and media culture (50%), interactive media (25%), and screen media (25%). He welcomes contact from prospective higher degree research students in communications, media, and creative industries, supervising projects in documentary practice and theory (including online documentary and AR/MR/VR nonfiction), audience research, software studies, and practice-based research across photography, interactive media, VR, low-budget film production, visual art, script-writing, short filmmaking, activist video, mobile media, FPS game sound, and music video.

Hight has produced significant scholarly works, including books such as Faking it: Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality with Jane Roscoe (Manchester University Press, 2001), Television mockumentary: Reflexivity, satire and a call to play (Manchester University Press, 2010), New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses co-edited with Kate Nash and Catherine Summerhayes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Fans, Blockbusterisation, and the Transformation of Cinematic Desire: Global Receptions of the Hobbit Film Trilogy with Charles H. Michelle et al. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and Software Literacy Education and Beyond with Eleni Khoo et al. (Routledge, 2017). Recent publications feature The Elephant’s Leg: Adventures in the Creative Industries and The Elephant's Leg II: Creativity in Action with Mark Minichiello (2021 and 2025). Since December 2017, he has co-edited Studies in Documentary Film with Professor Kate Nash. Notable projects encompass the Media Doctor collaboration with Dr. Amanda Wilson to rate health news credibility and combat misinformation; the Cinema Industry Research Network with Dr. Simon Weaving to future-proof cinema amid streaming shifts; a Marsden-funded study on online documentary culture (2010-2014); and a TLRI grant on software literacy resulting in the 2017 monograph. His contributions aid in navigating fake news, health misinformation, and evolving media landscapes.