Current PhD Research

Jiang Ye | Cross-Cultural Writing: Chinese Fan Fiction on the English World | School of Asian Studies, The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies | Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Maghiel van Crevel | 01-10-2019 to 30-09-2023

My topic focus on Chinese fan fiction written by Chinese young female based on English source texts. It asks how this collective writing behaviour that crosses cultural borders in an unique way can realise Chinese young female’s subjectivities. In four case studies, I will focus on four different identifications in which the said subjectivities emerge through the authors’ agency. I will both close-read the texts and invoke the bigger picture of overarching tropes and media.

Rose Smith | University of Groningen
This dissertation aims to critically scrutinize how transnational knowledge bases create a hegemonic European Communist memory narrative in museums. It fills a conceptual and empirical gap in the field of memory studies. First, the concept of mnemonic hegemony, though has been used by various scholars in memory studies, has not yet been properly developed; thus, it opens up an analytic optic that specifically focuses on mnemonic power struggles for obtaining a special advantage or authority. Second, while there is a substantial amount of research on the European memory of Communism, the transnational network organizations of European memory, as well as the museums of Communism, there is no research that specifically deals with how museum members of the Platform for European Conscience narrate Communist past.

Paola Gonzalez Salas | University of Groningen
This PhD research aims to explore the cultural narratives in two areas of the city of Temuco (Chile) between 1930 and 1950 and how the imposition of foreign constructions and non-violently dynamics contributed to the invisibilisation of the indigenous culture of the zone.

Francisca Silva Layera | News frames and effects on the affective assessment of immigrants: An analysis of Chilean digital media | University of Groningen, Faculty of Arts, Graduate School for the Humanities (GSH) | Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia, Dr. Florian Lippert, Dr. Hugh McDonnell, Dr. Marc Esteve Del Valle, Dr. Konstantin Mierau & Dr. Jeanette […]

Danelle Du Plessis | Narratives of Crisis and the Cultural Practices of Coping with Them: Engendering Mediated Time During the Coronavirus Pandemic | University of Groningen, Faculty of Arts, Graduate School for the Humanities (GSH) | Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia Martín & Dr. Ksenia Robbe

The purpose of this project is to explore gendered responses to the Coronavirus pandemic as a process of cultural organization to understand its implications for gender (in)equality. It proposes the development of the concept of ‘time use’ as a measurement of gender (in)equality to be used as a systematic temporal analytical tool during times of crisis. Within this context, it seeks to interrogate the role of the media in the construction of cultural representations of gendered time use in the home under lockdown and how the resultant cultural discourses can contribute to either the legitimization or attenuation of gender inequalities.