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Languages, Linguistics and Film

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Dr Cristina Moreno Almeida

Cristina

Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures & Arabic Cultural Studies and IHSS Fellow

Email: c.morenoalmeida@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: Arts One 1.22
Website: https://www.cristinamorenoalmeida.com
Office Hours: by appointment 

Profile

I am currently the Principal Investigator of the ERC-Starting Grant (ERC selected, UKRI funded) project ‘Digital Al-Andalus: Radical Perspectives Of and Through Al-Andalus’ (2023-2024). The project explores the amalgamation of historical events, politicized narratives, nostalgia for lost empires, cultural diversity, and violent actions in the realm of digital media. I have a keen interest in exploring the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and power within the realms of cultural production and digital cultures. My specific areas of interest encompass youth culture, rap music, memes, and digital cultural production. I am particularly fascinated by discourses related to power and resistance, patriotism, nationalism, and emerging forms of Far-Right ideologies.  

My new book Memes, Monsters, and the Digital Grotesque (Oxford University Press, 2024), presents a novel approach to studying informal politics, monstrous aesthetics, and digital media. The book revolves around digital cultures, focusing on memes, politics, and digital aesthetics exploring grotesque aesthetics in memes and other forms of digital cultural production to articulate contemporary issues and politics online. 

Among my other publications is my single-authored book Rap Beyond Resistance: Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco (Palgrave McMillan, 2017) is part of my work looking at the intersection between aesthetics, politics, and digital culture. The book discusses the tension between state-sponsored cultures and the ways in which independent artists negotiate between patriotic musical traditions and finding strategies to overcome mediatic and economic censorship. I have also published work on memes, politics and digital aesthetics in two articles at New Media and Society and The International Journal of Press/Politics. Both articles discuss the development of meme culture in Morocco as a medium to mock power, but also the preferred mode of expression for the newly emerged local Alt-Right. Additionally, I have published on creative forms of youth online participation in Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and the UAE in papers published in Media, Culture & Society and Global Media and Communication.  

My academic journey includes prior roles at the LSE Middle East Centre and the Department of Media and Communications, where I collaborated on the 'Personalised Media and Participatory Culture' project (2015-2017) with the American University of Sharjah (UAE). In this project, my research centred on young people’s participatory culture, creative production, and internet usage in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and the UAE. I also held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship working at the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. This fellowship enabled me to delve into the study of Moroccan digital cultures, investigating the social, cultural, and political implications of disseminating cultural content through digital platforms. 

Additionally, I have actively engaged with young artists through various initiatives, such as the Fábrica de Rimas/Fabrique des Rimes (Rhyme Factory) project, which facilitated collaborations between rappers from Colombia and Morocco (2012-2015). I have also contributed to the Pop-Up Studios project with the British Council in Morocco, where I shared my expertise in the music field with aspiring young artists. Furthermore, I organized the (Beat)Making the North African Cool! workshop, a beat-making event centred on North African music, as part of the Being Human Festival in 2019. 

Find more about my work and upcoming events at cristinamorenoalmeida.com  

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