Dr Luis Freijo

Luis Freijo is a Research Associate at the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London, where he works for the project AGE-C: Ageing and Gender in European Cinema. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, a MA by Research from the University of Birmingham and a Joint Degree in Journalism and Audiovisual Communication from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid. He has held positions as postgraduate teaching associate and research assistant at the University of Birmingham, and as University Teacher at the University of Liverpool. He also has a professional background in written press, radio and, especially, national television in Spain. 

Research Interests and PhD Supervision

• Ageing and Gender in European Cinema
• Spanish Television
• World Cinema Theory
• Film Genre Theory
• The global film Western

Luis Freijo specialises in World Cinema theory, film genre theory and the global Western, as they apply to film aesthetics and politics. His current research is dedicated to the study of ageing and gender within the project AGE-C: Ageing and Gender in European Cinema, funded by VolkswagenStiftung (2023-2026), where he intends to apply methodologies based on genre and aesthetics but also based on his previous professional experience in Spanish television.His previous research was focused on recalibrating film genre theory to make it relevant to the field of World Cinema studies, and not just to Hollywood films. He utilises the Western as the genre of context, under the premise that if the Western can be de-Westernised, then any genre can. He has recently contributed chapters on the relation between genre filmmaking and politics to 'Sense8: Transcending Television' (2021), 'The Routledge Companion to European Cinema' (2022) and 'Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash' (2022), and has co-authored a new theorisation of World Cinema published in Transnational Screens (2021).

Expertise and Public Engagement 

Luis Freijo is a regular contributor to the Spanish publishing company 'Notorious Ediciones', which specialises in film books intended for a general cinephile audience. Since 2017, Luis has contributed chapters to more than twenty books on Hollywood and European directors, stars and films. These include collaborative volumes on John Ford, Nicholas Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Rita Hayworth, Gary Cooper, Federico Fellini, Montgomery Clift, Gene Tierney, Bette Davis, the James Bond films and the Hollywood production of 1940 and 1950, and co-authored monographs on The Wild Bunch, Alien, The Magnificent Seven, The Apartment, My Darling Clementine, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Lawrence of Arabia and Fort Apache.He has also worked as a panellist in the cultural radio show 'El Marcapáginas' (Capital Radio, Madrid, 2016-2019) and contributed to the culture section of the online newspaper bez.es (2017).