Since 2024
Professor for Romance Studies (Hispanic Studies & Portuguese/Brazilian Studies), University of Cologne

Since 2024
Director of the ISAP “Interdisciplinary Brazilian Studies”-Programm between the University of Cologne and the University of São Paulo (funded by the DAAD)

2022 & 2024
German Director in São Paulo of Mecila: Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (funded by the BMBF)

2018 - present
Director of the Luso-Brazilian Institute (PBI), University of Cologne

2018 - present
Director of the Center for the Portuguese-Speaking World (ZPW), University of Cologne

2018 - 2024
Junior Professor for Latin American Studies & Brazilian Studies, University of Cologne

2015 - 2018
DFG-funded research project “Glocalising Modes of Modernity: Transnational and Cross-Media Interconnections in Latin American Film Musicals”, University of Bremen

2015 - 2018
Scientific Coordinator of the Ibero-American Institute (IIA), University of Bremen

Since 2013
Visiting Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at various universities: University of Reading, Yaşar University in Izmir, Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Federal University of Bahia in Salvador da Bahia, Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza

2013 - 2015
Research Associate, Department of Romance Studies / Hispanic Studies, University of Bremen

2013
PhD in Film Studies / Brazilian Studies, University of Mainz

2009 - 2013
Research Associate, Department of Film, Theatre and Cultural Studies, University of Mainz

• Postcolonial theories and cultural practices
• Transregional entanglements in Latin America and between Latin American countries, the USA and the Iberian Peninsula
• Genre studies with a focus on Hispanic and Lusophone countries
• History and aesthetics of photography and film in Latin America
• Latin American literature of the 20^th and 21^st century (with a focus on Brazil)
• Popular Latin American music in the context of media history

Duration: 2021-2025
Funding: Fritz-Thyssen Foundation

https://pbi.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/forschung/forschungsprojekte-und-kooperationen

This research project will provide the first comparative analysis of film musicals from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, in the 1930s–1950s, through their transnational, intercultural and cross-media interconnections, thus unveiling an important sector of media history and popular culture in the Americas. As one of the first in-depth studies of early cinematic “glocalisation” in Latin America, the proposed project promises to give new insights into complex transnational exchange processes, both symbolic and in terms of media capital, including their role for shaping imaginaries of modernity in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. A network of “crisscrossing histories” will be mapped on the basis of a body of around 500 film musicals, focusing on paradigmatic films featuring the most popular singer-actor star figures who have played a central role in the transnational cultural economy of Cine Tanguero, Chanchada and Comedia Ranchera genre productions. Combining semiotically-grounded genre and star studies with postcolonial, gender and globalisation theories, the project proposes the following objectives: (1) to analyse the cultural economy of musical film productions in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico and their multi-directional media flows as glocalising modes of modernity in Latin America; (2) to frame film genre productions in the Americas as a site of converging, but also conflicting identities and discourses and to investigate the local appropriations of Hollywood film genre structures; (3) to establish the interdependence between film and music industries in the period in focus and the kind of transnational and cross-media relations they elicited across the cultural practices of tango, samba and ranchera; (4) to analyse the role played by singer-actor stars and film crews in the interbreeding of different film musical subgenres; and (5) to establish and analyse the results of political interventions into the film industry by governments, corporations and lobbies in Argentinean, Brazilian and Mexican cinemas.

(Research Project funded by the DFG – German Research Foundation)

Mecila, the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America, is one of five international centres for advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in cooperation with local institutions and funding agencies.

Mecila is an academic consortium composed of three German institutions: Freie Universität Berlin (coordination), Universität zu Köln, and Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz); and four Latin American institutions: Universidade de São Paulo, Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento, El Colegio de México, and Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (CONICET / Universidad Nacional de La Plata). The Centre aims at developing cutting-edge research through horizontal interdisciplinary cooperation among scholars from Germany, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions of the world, drawing on long-term collaborative ties between the consortium institutions.

Mecila’s headquarters are in São Paulo, Brazil. Its activities take place at all seven member institutions, as well as at other cooperating institutions with joint projects.

Funding: BMBF

Website: mecila.net

Duration: 2020-2026