CITY CITY

Rhianna Dhillon

A BBC flm critic and podcast host is the new tutor for City’s Film, TV, Video and Radio Specialism course.

Rhianna Dhillon, flm critic on BBC Radio5Live and host of The PodPod podcast, said: “I have enjoyed the challenge of making the course interactive. Teaching at City has given me the frsthand opportunity to see young women want to come up and talk about flms, which is awesome.”

Determined to make her class participative and the closest real life experience to being a flm critic, Ms Dhillon has gone to great lengths to bring in diverse guest lecturers, including a BAFTA-winning flm director and a podcast commissioner.

Ms Dhillon joked that her career “peaked at its very beginning” when she became the in-house flm critic for Radio 1 before she graduated from the University of Reading.

Lara Whyte

Fourteen years after graduating, City alumna Lara Whyte has returned to the journalism department as a lecturer. Lara Whyte joined City this year to teach TV and production to broadcast journalism students.

She graduated from City’s broadcast journalism course in 2008 and has worked across a range of television, broadcast, and print journalism since, including as a producer at ITN Productions. Her book, Freedom Fighter, written alongside Joanna Palani, focuses on the story of Ms Palani’s personal war against ISIS on the frontlines in Syria.

Ms Whyte advised young journalists, “Be respectful and empathetic and treat people like they’re real people. Experiment with your own technical capacity. Technical skills can be learned, so don’t be intimidated by other mediums.”