Dr. Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou
School of Arts and Media
Current positions
Lecturer in Film Studies (BA Hons Film Production)
BIOGRAPHY
My research is on European cinemas (centred on British, Greek, Spanish, and Irish cinemas) and film theory, genre and gender, memory and identity construction, and ideology bridging the gap between Film Studies-based disciplines, Gender Studies, Feminist Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies and audience engagement. I have also developed an interest in the horror film and I am currently working on this area.
In my Ph.D. I looked at representations of genre (romance, the musical and melodrama) and gender (the gaze and representations of women), as well as devices such as allegory and the Bakhtinian carnivalesque through a series of analyses of European films about the Spanish, Irish, and Greek Civil Wars by Ken Loach, José Luis Cuerda, Fernando Trueba, Neil Jordan and Theo Angelopoulos. My detailed textual analysis and comparison of films made by the above filmmakers was informed by different critical approaches, and broke new ground by deconstructing and critically reanimating civil war cinema. I was able to demonstrate what kind of gender identities these films (an important aspect of popular culture) promote, what their relationship to their social and political contexts of production is, how they make use of romance, melodrama, tragedy and comedy, as well as what kind of cultural memories they create. This research was funded by IRCHSS and The Humanities Institute of Ireland, and it was published by Routledge in 2013: European Civil War Films: Memory, Conflict and Nostalgia. 2nd edition published in 2016.
A series of articles from my work on European cinema emerged in journals and edited collections. I was invited to contribute in an edited collection on Greek Cinema, and I have published on animated film as well as on the cinema of Theo Angelopoulos and Brecht.
I have been invited to deliver seminars at the University of London, Leeds Metropolitan University, Panteion University of Athens (Greece), University of Central Greece, the University of Salford, University College Dublin, and University of Zaragoza (Spain). And I have presented my research at ten national and international conferences.
Consultancy Work (Public Education Sector)
I am involved in the project ‘Public Awareness on the Subject of Social Inclusion and Bullying’, funded by the 2nd Prefecture, County Fthiotida (Greece) as a consultant. My consultancy work involves the evaluation of the use of British social realist films in teaching in public schools in Greece, and the production of teaching strategies and materials. I was invited to deliver a seminar and two workshops on this project at the University of Central Greece on 16 June 2015.
Journal Editorship
I edited the Special Issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Media and Cultural Politics (Intellect) themed 'Studies in Cultural Memory', published in June 2016. I serve as a reviewer for the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (John Hopkins University Press), and for the Journal of Media Practice.
Areas of research
Film, Cultural memory, Theo Angelopoulos, Brechtian cinema, Civil war cinema
I teach introduction to film analysis, introduction to film theory, global cinema 1, global cinema 2. In the past, I taught modules on film theory, critical approaches, the city in film, interpreting TV, popular European cinema, and culture and society.
- Film theory and film history
- European film (British, Irish, Spanish, Greek)
- Critical theory (with emphasis on popular culture)
- Critical approaches to film and television
- European civil war film (form and style, gender and genre)
- Film and history
- Cultural memory
Other research interests include Greek New Wave and Greek Weird Cinema, European popular cinema (comedy, the western, the horror film), and Nordic noir.
I would be happy to supervise PhD students in the following areas: European cinema, film and history, civil war film, popular European cinema, Greek New Wave and Greek new weird, Nordic noir, the horror film and horror television.
- Film theory and film history
- European film
- Critical theory (with emphasis on popular culture)
- Critical approaches to film and television
- European civil war film (form and style, gender and genre)
- Film and history
- Cultural memory
Other research interests include Greek New Wave and Greek Weird Cinema, European popular cinema (comedy, the western, the horror film), and Nordic noir.
I would be happy to supervise PhD students in the following areas: European cinema, film and history, civil war film, popular European cinema, Greek New Wave and Greek new weird, Nordic noir, the horror film and horror television.
Qualifications
- Post Graduate Teaching Certificate in Academic Practice, University of Salford (2013).
- Ph.D. in Film Studies, University College Dublin (2010): Conflict, Remembering and Forgetting: Civil Wars and Memories in Late Twentieth-Century European Cinema’. Published in 2013, Re-printed in 2016.
- M.A. in European Studies, University College Dublin (2004). Dissertation: ‘Watching Lola Rentt and Le Fabuleaux Destin d’Amélie Poulain: A Prologue to ‘Europeaness’?’
- BA in English Literature and Civilisation, Université du Maine, France (2002).
- Camera and Lighting Course, Filmbase, Dublin (2006).
Memberships
- Member of the Cultural, Communication and Media Research Group, University of Salford.
- Member of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA).
- Member of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS).