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Languages, Linguistics and Film

Dr Grazia Ingravalle

Grazia

Senior Lecturer in Film

Email: g.ingravalle@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Arts One 1.02A

Profile

I am a theorist and historian of film and media, which I investigate through the lens of audio-visual archives. In the last ten years, my research has concentrated on film museums, archives and cinémathèques, ranging from the BFI National Archive to the George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. By examining archival collections, institutional histories and curatorial practices, I trace cinema’s transition from the analogue world to the digital age. These and related concerns have inspired my writing in several edited collections and in The Moving ImageScreen and my monograph Archival Film Curatorship: Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital (Amsterdam University Press, 2023).

As an archival and museum object and a visual historical record, film can tell many layered stories about our past. My current work interrogates the enduring legacies of colonialism by examining colonial films, film archives and museums from a postcolonial perspective. I have written about the ethics and politics of archiving and displaying colonial films shot in British India in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and Viewfinder. My second book project will investigate the history of cinema as a colonial visual medium, its archival conservation and the circulation of this ‘difficult heritage’ in the present day.

I was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow (2017-2021) and I am currently serving as Vice-President for Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema, and Trustee for Learning on Screen, the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council.

I welcome PhD applications in the fields of film and media history, film and media theory, film archival studies, film curation, early and silent cinema, colonial cinema, postcolonial critique, digital media, digital remix and found footage documentary.

I am currently supervising Poorvi Gaur’s research “Planning Films for ‘Family Planning’: Situating Women in Films and Practices of Films Division of India (1950-80)” and Xiaoxin Cheng’s thesis “Mapping British Chinese Identities on Screen.”

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