Research
[ˈriː.sɝːtʃ]
My main research interest lies in environmental humanities and the intersection between technology and imaginations of the everyday, in and through different mediated forms. For my PhD research – situated between urban studies and media studies – I am exploring the entanglement between real and virtual environments in architecture through the lens of temporality, spatiality and care. Together with Carolyn Birdsall, I am co-organizing the ASCA Cities Seminar Series at the University of Amsterdam, featuring guest lectures and masterclasses on ‘More-than-human Cities’ and ‘Material Cities’.
In my research, I am drawing on qualitative methods with a special attention to how we make ‘sense’ with our senses as well. At the moment, I am co-editing a book on ‘Digital Exhaustion’ that explores the structures of feeling of constant connectivity. Other recent projects range from the imagination of ‘supernatural cities’ in Turkish television to the affective charging of pandemic memes.
Teaching
[ˈtiː.tʃɪŋ]
Over the past years, I have taught at the University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Westfälische Hochschule at both the undergraduate and graduate level and supervised BA and MA theses. In my teaching, I am bringing together different theoretical and methodological approaches as well as different media objects. For example, one of my favourite seminars in the last semester – ‘The End of the World as we know it? Media and the Environment’ – explored the mediatization of environmental change through a variety of cross-media examples from the japanese cult film Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) to the simulation game Stop Disasters! designed by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Together with Joke Hermes, I have written “The Pocketbook of Audience Research“, a qualitative methods handbook that uses contemporary, global television and cross-media examples to explain essential approaches to audience research and outline how they can be employed.
Creative
[kriˈeɪ.tɪv]
In addition to my academic work, I continue to freelance as a creative director and writer in Germany, The Netherlands and the United States. Drawing on my experience as a creative director and social media lead in and for different creative agencies, I mostly support projects in the arts and cultural sector with strategy, design and content.
Currently, I am also an editorial assistant for NECSUS Journal of Media Studies and assistant editor for the European Journal of Cultural Studies – bringing together my academic and editorial work.