Professor Dina Iordanova
Research profile
Originally from Bulgaria, and having worked later on in Canada, the US and England, my background is in philosophy and aesthetics. I joined St. Andrews as the University's first Chair in Film Studies in 2004 and led the start of that Department's dramatic climb up the research league tables to the best score achieved by a department in Scotland in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. I am the founder of the Centre for Film Studies and the publishing house St Andrews Film Studies. After chairing the Film Studies department and serving as a Director of Research for the top performing School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies, the University asked me to serve as a Provost of the ancient St. Leonard's college, with responsibility for doctoral students.
I have published extensively on transnational cinema, global film industries, and film festivals, as well as on Eastern European and Balkan cinema. In my work, I investigate film history in its socio-historical and mediatic context, paying particular attention to issues of comparative critical analysis of cross-cultural representation, cultural sensibilities and diverse identities. Lately I pioneered research into international film festivals and the dynamics of global film circulation. I am active on the international speakers circuit, have been a distinguished visiting professor at Universities in the USA and across Europe and Asia, and I am a recipient of multiple Rockefeller, Leverhulme and Carnegie Trust awards. My work has been translated into twenty languages and has been adopted for teaching around the world.
See more details of my research profile and read my blog DinaView.
Research students
Currently I supervise students working on film and history, film festivals, and Eastern European cinema. I receive many queries from potential students, mainly in two of the areas of my expertise: A. transnational cinema and film festivals/global film circulation and B. Eastern European/Balkan cinema. These remain the areas in which I am still mainly interested in supervising research students.
Selected publications
I have published numerous articles and book chapters. However, the eleven books to which I have attached my name remain the focal point of my work. These are in several main areas:
- film festivals (The Festival Circuit, Film Festivals and Imagined Communities, Film Festivals and East Asia)
- transnational film (Cinema at the Periphery, Moving People, Moving Images)
- Eastern Central European (Cinema of the Other Europe, BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema)
- Balkan cinema (Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media, Emir Kusturica, Cinema of the Balkans, and New Bulgarian Cinema)
I have also guest edited special issues of Framework on Images of Gypsies in International Cinema (2003), of South Asian Popular Culture on Transnational Historiography of Cinematic Exchanges (2006), of Cineaste (New York) on Contemporary Balkan Cinema (2007), of Kinokultura on Bulgarian cinema (2006), of Third Text on Romani Representation (2008) and of Film International on Film Festivals (2008).Current research
I am still supervising PhD students and am involved in several large research projects. These include:
- directing the Centre for Film Studies and coordinating the work of the Carnegie Trust-sponsored Scottish Consortium for Film and Visual Studies.
- directing the large Leverhulme Trust-sponsored research project Dynamcs of World Cinema (2008-2011), with Australian co-investigator Prof. Stuart Cunningham and with postdoctoral fellows Ruby Cheung and Alex Fischer.
- editing the series of Film Festival Yearbooks. Three volumes have already been published, and I am currently working on preparing the next two: Film Festivals and Activism (forthcoming in 2012, co-edited with Leshu Torchin) and Producing a Film Festival (forthcoming in 2013, co-authored with Alex Fischer).
- developing the publishing house St Andrews Film Studies with Alex Marlow-Mann.
- building the Scottish Film Festivals Network, sponsored by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with Alex Marlow-Mann.