The Film Studies Department at King’s College London is a leading centre for research on all aspects of cinema, from its earliest days to the present, and branching into related screen-based technologies, including television, online media, and artists’ film and video.
Join us at one of our research seminars presented by speakers who specialise in film.
Semester 1
8 October 2025
Mingkun Li (KCL): “Group-mediated Trauma as Parapraxis: MediaFng the Third Front Memory through the Television Documentary Series in Post-socialist China”
Chair: Chris Berry *Followed by drinks reception in the room*
22 October (in KIN 204, formerly K3.11)
Nezih Erdoğan (Istinye University Istanbul): “Adventures in Modernity and Spectatorship: Early Years of Cinema in Istanbul”
Chair: Iain Smith
12 November (in KIN 204, formerly K3.11)
Neda Genova (University of Southampton): “Politics of Surfaces: Humour, Mediation and Abstraction on the Terrain of Sofia”
Chair: Daniel Mann
26 November (in KIN 204, formerly K3.11)
Christian Keathley (Middlebury College): “Cinephilia and History, or The Mystery of William Keighley”
Chair: Tom Brown
3 December
Lawrence Alexander (University of Oxford): “Face Value in Contemporary Moving Image Art: Aesthetics and Politics in Harun Farocki, William Kentridge, and Hito Steyerl”
Chair: Jinhee Choi
Semester 2
28 January 2026
Kay Dickinson (University of Glasgow): “From Background to Binary: Migrant Extras Amidst Labour Market Upheavals”
Chair: Erica Carter
4 February (in KIN 204, formerly K3.11)
Xin Peng (University of Cambridge): “James Wong Howe’s Chinese Picture”
Chair: Elena Gorfinkel / Chris Berry
18 February
Farshad Zahedi (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid): “Asian Ecocinemas and the Anthropocene”
4 March
Martine Beugnet (Université Paris Cité): “Ghost Touch: Film, Tactile Screens and the Memory of Gestures”
Chair: Erica Balsom
18 March
Book event (KCL): Participants and titles TBC
*Followed by drinks reception in the room*
24/25 Seminar Archive:
Semester 1
16 October 2024
Victoria Pistivsek (King’s College London): “Politics, Power, and Piss: Abject Masculinityin Succession”
Chair: Jeff Scheible
23 October
Jennifer Coates (University of Sheffield): “Memories of Cinema-Going in Postwar Japan: An Ethno- history”
Chair: Jinhee Choi
6 November
David Wood (UCL/National Autonomous University of Mexico): “For a free-flowing documentary: UNESCO, internationalist montage and the Third-World episode film in the 1950s-60s”
Chair: Mark Betz
20 November
Catherine Grant (Independent Scholar): “Finding Pictures for Found Voices? Videographic Criticism and its Intersections with Film Studies Oral History Research”
Chair: Tom Brown
4 December
Kathleen Loock (Leibniz University Hannover): “Remaking the Past: Hollywood, Memory, and Movie Generations”
Chair: Iain Smith
5 December
BFI Key Scholars in Film Studies, BFI Southbank (time TBC)
Steve Choe (San Francisco State University): “Laugh Together, Weep Alone: Korean Cinema’s Ethical Ambiguities”
Semester 2
22 January 2025
James Cahill (University of Toronto): “Neither Dog nor Master”
Chair: Sarah Cooper
5 February
Susana Viegas (University of Lisbon): Title TBC
Chair: Catherine Wheatley
12 February
Roy Grundmann (Boston University): “Floating Signifiers: Ocean Liners as Filmic Objects”
Chair: Rosalind Galt
26 February
Grazia Ingravalle (Queen Mary University of London): Title TBC
Chair: Erica Carter
19 March
Book event (King’s College London) Participants and titles TBC