Speakers

Catherine Grant makes, reflects on and publishes audiovisual essays about screen media studies. She is author of the Open Access scholarly platform Film Studies For Free. She was Professor of Digital Media and Screen Studies in the School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, until August 2020 when she was appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow. She is an elected member of Academia Europaea’s Film, Media and Visual Studies section. She is also currently Cinepoetics Senior Fellow (Center for Advanced Film Studies, Freie Universität Berlin), working on the 2020-21 research focus in Digital Material and Essayistic Method.

Mathew Charles is a research fellow at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá and Co-I on the AHRC/GCRF project that developed. He is the director of  "Operación Berlín. The Children who fought war in Colombia" and his work focuses on the role of children and young people in organised criminal structures. 

Paul Cooke is Chair of World Cinemas and the University of Leeds and PI on the AHRC/GCRF project that developed this film. He has worked on a range of participatory film projects aimed at supporting young people to shape civil society in a number of post-conflict settings (see https://changingthestory.leeds.ac.uk/), as well as a number of similar project focussed on a range of public health issues, particularly the misuse of Antibiotics and Mental Health. He is Exec Producer of "Operación Berlín. The Children who fought war in Colombia".

Stephanie Dennison is Professor of Brazilian Studies and Director of the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at the University of Leeds. From 2015-2018 she led the AHRC-funded research network Soft Power, Cinema and the BRICS.

Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at SOAS University of London, and the Principal Investigator of the 5-year, ERC-funded project “Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies” (2019-2024). Originally from South Africa, she is a researcher, teacher, filmmaker, film curator, and film festival founder/director, and her work aims to combine film scholarship, practice, and activism in mutually enlightening ways.

Chris Homewood is Lecturer in German and World Cinemas at the University of Leeds. He is Subject Leader for the JH Film Studies programmes and Programme Manager for the MA Film Studies. His is most recent publication is ‘The Limits of Hollywood as an Instrument of Chinese Soft Power’ in Stephanie Dennison (ed.) Cinema and Soft Power (2021).

Mani Sharpe is a Lecturer in Film Studies at Leeds University. His most recent research has focused on cinematic representations of the face - particularly in relation to questions of politics and ethics.

Alan O’Leary is Associate Professor in Film and Media in Digital Contexts at the University of Aarhus. His most recent book is a 2019 study of the political film classic The Battle of Algiers (Italy/Algiers, 1966), and he has published a videoessay on the film in [in]Transition, also in 2019.

Thea Pitman is Professor of Latin American Studies, specialising in cultural production and curatorial practice involving electronic and/or digital technologies. She has published the edited anthology Latin American Cyberliterature and Cyberculture (LUP, 2007; with Claire Taylor) and the monograph Latin American Identity in Online Cultural Production (Routledge, 2013; with Claire Taylor). Her forthcoming book is entitled Decolonising the Museum: The Curation of Indigenous Contemporary Art in Brazil (Tamesis, 2021).