Close-ups

Miriam De Rosa
Cinema, Photography and Television

Let’s talk about you: what is your background, what do you teach, and what are your research interests?
My name is Miriam De Rosa and I recently joined the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage where I am working on audio-visual media, film and screen media theories and visual cultures.
I am originally from Milan, where I studied at the Catholic University with a PhD in Communication Cultures on postmedia condition and cinema. There I participated in teaching and research activities for several years, teaching Audio-visual Media Policies, Media Pragmatics, Visual Culture, while in the Brescia branch of the same university I taught Principles of Film History and at the University of Insubria in Como I was in charge of the Cinema, Photography and Television course for a few years.
My research has always been very much compared with the work of colleagues abroad and this has been a great encouragement to me to actively participate in the activities of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS), to contribute since its inception to the IMACS network (International Master in Cinema Studies) in which I have participated in various capacities and of which I am now coordinator. These experiences and attending international conferences were fundamental firstly to support my application for a DAAD research grant, which I won and which led me to spend a semester at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and then to my relocation as Senior Lecturer in Media & Communication at Coventry University. At Coventry I directed and redesigned the Bachelor Degree in Media and Communication before moving to the Centre for Postdigital Cultures when it opened. At the CPC I was in charge, besides research, of internationalisation and launching the PhD school in 2020.

Have you always known that this was going to be your path?
I have always loved to explore through study, even as a student, although perhaps initially more creative and later applied.
For instance, when I approached research after my degree, the context in which I initially found myself doing research was non-academic: for a short time, I worked in a research institute where I soon realised that a series of processes, methodologies, motivations were really in line with my interests, my way of thinking, of articulating ideas. The next step was to abandon contract and purely commercial research, which I felt was too restrictive for me, and to embark on a PhD, where I found the broader perspective I was looking for. First of all, therefore, 'my path' was research.
In this sense, teaching was initially an extension of what I had identified as my primary interest. But then, perhaps thanks to the possibility of working alongside my supervisor in my teaching activities from the very beginning, teaching became essential. Today, for me it is as essential to research as it is to the human and pedagogical side that I am convinced the university as an institution must necessarily have.

What do teaching and researching mean to you?
These are two sides of the same coin: on the one hand research generates ideas, concepts, articulates thought, and on the other hand this material is brought to life through its circulation, through the work of testing, refining and possibly reformulating that takes place when trying to make knowledge accessible - in this sense the classroom test bed is fundamental and can really create a virtuous cycle in which teaching is not only inspired by research, but students also feel part of a virtuous cycle in which they are and know they are involved. The two activities therefore, for me, are hardly separable and when projects focus on only one of the two components as is sometimes inevitable, the approach I often imagine is to organise syllabi as publications or vice versa to identify modules suitable to be taught within publication projects, seminars or science outreach events.

Can you offer any advice to researchers in the early stages of their career?
I say that conducting research does not mean crossing the threshold of a parallel world separate from the world of practices, of experience, of everyday life. I say don't put these two things in opposition because it is simplistic and unrealistic. I say that research is the way to find solutions, so if you don't like something as it is, the first step is to question it, to take an interest in it, to think differently about it - in other words, to take care of it, which is the implicit step in any research process.

Last update: 27/02/2024