The lecture “Reel Borders: studying borderlands through film” will be delivered by Prof. Kevin Smets from ECHO Research Group (VUB).
When: 02.06.2026, 12:30-14:00
Where: Pleinlaan 5, 2nd floor Room 5.2.03
This event will be held in person. Everyone is welcome to bring their lunch along.
About the topic:
Combining the perspectives of border studies and visual culture studies, this presentation will focus on borders and human (in)mobility. Recognising that borders are as much about the territorial demarcations of states as they are about cultural imaginaries and social boundaries, we will explore how visual culture can effectively capture both the material and socio-cultural dimensions and their underlying tensions. To this end, we will analyse the ongoing research project 'Reel Borders', which examines how border imaginaries and cinema (both fiction and documentary) relate to the border zones of the Irish (UK/Republic of Ireland), Spanish-Moroccan (Ceuta and Melilla) and Turkish-Syrian borders. We will discuss how film can be used in the struggle over the meaning of the border by different actors - state and border institutions, professional and amateur filmmakers and activists -. The presentation is based on fieldwork conducted on these borders through participatory film workshops and cineforums. Drawing on the capacity of visual methods to create concrete interventions, the presentation thus offers a reflection on the possibilities of using film as an ethnographic field device to understand border experiences and the epistemic sensitivities of constructing knowledge.
About the project:
Reel Borders is funded by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (#948278). More information on https://reelboders.eu
About the speaker:
Kevin Smets is associate professor of media and culture at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He is co-director of ECHO: Research group on media, culture & politics. He conducts research on media, migration and the social and political dimensions of film and visual culture. He has mainly worked on Turkey. He has been a visiting researcher at Bilgi University Istanbul, Freie Universität Berlin and University of Oxford. At VUB, he teaches an introductory course on film history. He currently coordinates the ERC-funded project Reel Borders.
This research has been conducted together with Silvia Almenara-Niebla, Lennart Soberon and Irene Gutiérrez-Torres.
