Dr David Gyimah

(he/him)

Overview

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah is a filmmaker and Reader/ Associate Professor at the School of Journalism, Culture and Media. His career over three decades covers Innovative filmmaking; AI; television and radio in various position at Channel 4, WTN, BBC World Service, Radio 4, Breakfast and Newsight as a reporter, political and news producer and videojournalist. He has been a creative director in advertising, launched or been involved in successful start start-ups  e.g. Justgiving.com, and was a selected artist-in-residence at London's Southbank Centre.

He teaches on the MA International Journalism (MAIJ) programme leading in Foreign News Reporting (as a former freelance correspondent in South Africa (92-94)) and Emerging Journalism (aka Story Lab/ AI), as well delivering conceptual frameworks for MA dissertations in Information Gathering, and guiding students towards creating their final projects.

Dr Gyimah was previously at Westminster University where he led their news, documentary, and online coding courses (one of the first MA’s in the UK) before driving the innovative interdisciplinary disLAB, (the digital storytelling LAB).

He has wide and deep expertise in AI and story production; writing; creativity and entrepreneurialism; politics, youth and culture; and history and diaspora Black cultural archives. His PhD practice of Cinema Journalism uncovers the cognition and  emerging style of journalism building on Robert Drew's Direct Cinema. It coalesces videojournalism and cinema. It has drawn wide favourable comments from industry experts such as Filmmaker Mark Cousins  and Presenter Jon Snow.

Dr Gyimah has travelled to, and trained journalists from around the world in Russia, India, China. Egypt, Algeria, Ghana, South Africa, across Europe and America, and working with outfits, such as the Institute of War and Peace and UN. Working with the Press Association he trained first UK regional newspaper journalists to become videojournaliststs and trained staff at the FT and Chicago Sun Times.

His knowledge and experience of AI and storytelling has led to invitations to UK AI expert conferences e.g. Storytellers + Machine (2024), where he presented the use GenAI in creating archival stories. He’s been the visiting Asper Professor at The University of British Columbia and became involved with AI in 2014.

His AI films have, at request, been presented to Channel 4's Board of Directors and the British Screen Forum. In July 2024 he presented “Empowered” an AI-film about empowering Black women to the leading UK Black Business Entrepreneurs conference at the Natwest Conference Centre, London. His work has won grants e.g. Innovative UK, to develop storytelling programmes and create the first global start-up journal as editor-in-chief. Media Hyphenates brings together diverse students and businesses to creative innovative products and capture the journey in long form journalism using AI to visualise the publication.

Dr Gyimah came up with the idea, and co-founded the popular diversity journal Representology  – between Cardiff and Birmingham University’s Sir Lenny Henry Centre. He is a prolific writer on Medium, named as one their leading writers in journalism and innovation. He has published articles for the European Human Rights Law Review (EHRLR), The Journal of Radio and Audio Media's 100 years of the BBC edition on the history of Black Radio Archive (2024). His own archive was deemed historically important by global archive body FIAT/IFTA. Black Lives Matter: The fight for identity in the media was published Breaking the News: 500 Years of News in Britain (2022) in which Dr Gyimah was one of the exhibition's advisors. He was co-author on The future of journalism in a (post-Covid-19 world (2021)), and committee chair for the global three-day conference.

Dr Gyimah is a regular conference speaker (since 2005) with his knowledge published in publications, such as Apple, Google, The Online Journalism Handbook; The Broadcast Journalism Handbook, The Documentary Handbook, and Reimagining Journalism in Post-Truth World.  His expertise has been requested for reviewing AHRC bids, Journals e.g. Journalism Practice, Google's €6m European News Initiative fund, and The Royal Television Society Television News awards. He is a board member of Sbarc - Cardiff's Innovation park, and is the recipient of several global awards that include: the Knight Batten for innovation in journalism for creating the first video-online platform, and international Videojournalism Awards from Berlin.

He’s the EDI lead for his school, and is interested in PhD supervision across Innovation, AI and storytelling, culture and Black diaspora.

email address is GyimahD@cardiff.ac.uk