Dr. Catalin Brylla raises awareness of Research and Social Justice at the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image

conferences, Featured academics, Impact, Research Ethics

Dr. Catalin Brylla, Principal Lecturer in Film and TV and Deputy Head of CESJ, has chaired the DEI Committee for the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image since 2022, launching several initiatives.  At this year’s conference in Budapest, the DEI focus was on “Research and Social Justice”, featuring a roundtable discussion with Prof. Srivi Ramasubramanian (Newhouse School at Syracuse University), Prof. Beth Haller (Towson University) and Dr. Wyatt Moss-Wellington (University of New England). The roundtable, moderated by Dr. Ari Purnama, addressed the following questions:

  • How should media research relate to social justice issues in practice?
  • How do media representations of marginalised identities affect production, criticism, and perception of media?
  • How can media research be decolonised through marginalised perspectives, such as the Global South?
  • How can media research symbiotically involve the communities it studies, such as applying participatory research methods and knowledge exchange?

 

Another initiative has been a mentor-mentee programme that has provided support for early-career research on teaching, bidding and wellbeing, organised by committee member Dr. Kata Szita.

Brylla is currently developing with Prof. Jens Eder (Babelsberg University) a model to implement and study the social impact of documentaries, which they presented at the conference in Budapest:

The model is partly based on Brylla’s latest monograph ‘Documentary and Stereotypes: Reducing Stigma through Factual Media‘ (Palgrave 2023) and will be further developed in a research project that compares impact strategies in the UK and Germany.

Related Posts