Dr Christopher Riley is a broadcaster and film maker specialising in history and science documentaries.  He has worked on many of the BBC’s iconic science programmes from Tomorrow’s World and Rough Science to Science in Action and The Sky at Night. His feature documentary film In the Shadow of the Moon, the story of the Apollo astronauts, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Audience Award. 

He has held the position of senior visiting fellow at the University of Lincoln’s department of Media Production since 2007 and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his endeavours in public engagement in astronomy and space exploration in 2005.

Chris was a pioneer of web journalism, reporting for the BBC’s first online news service in 1996 and producing and presenting the corporations first live webcast - covering Africa’s total eclipse in 2001. He continues to work at the forefront of the communications revolution as the founder and managing director of the new media production company the attic room and the online film archive footagevault.

He is the author of more than thirty articles and books on astronomy and planetary science and regularly lectures on these and other topics. His latest book; Apollo 11, an owners manual, was published by Haynes in June this year. He is the producer of the remastered and restored 2009 director’s cut of NASA’s Apollo 11 documentary Moonwalk One and introduced the film at this year’s Glastonbury festival.

During his career he has flown at twice the speed of sound on Concorde, floated weightless for 30 minutes on board both Russian and European Space Agency parabolic flights and has ridden on two of NASA’s astrobiology missions; chasing the Leonid meteor showers around the world for BBC News.