Skip to main navigation Skip to main content
The University of Southampton
Centre for Democratic Futures
Email:
esf1e18@soton.ac.uk

Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez

Teaching Fellow in Global Media Industries

Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez's photo
Related links
Personal homepage

Estrella Sendra is a scholar, teacher, filmmaker, journalist and festival organiser, currently working as Teaching Fellow in Global Media Industries, at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and as Senior Teaching Fellow in Film and Screen Studies at SOAS, University of London.

She is recognised as Fellow by the Higher Education Academy. Her research interests include festival studies, film festivals, global screen media, African cinema, audiovisual representations of migration, transnational communities, youth and digital media, and gender. She is Associate Editor of Screenworks and Editorial Board Member in the Journal of African Media Studies . Since 2011, when she directed Témoignages de l’autre côté / Testimonials from the other side (2011), an awarded documentary film about migration, she has been developing a regional expertise in Senegal.

In 2018, she completed her PhD on cultural festivals in Senegal, fully funded by the Department of African Languages and Cultures at SOAS. She engages with creative and innovative teaching methods, such as assessment through video essays, and is the co-author of the ‘ Introductory Guide to Video Essays ’ published in Learning on Screen (2020). In 2020, she was awarded the SOAS Director’s Teaching Prize for Inspirational Teaching. She was the director of the Cambridge African Film Festival in 2014, and 2015, as well as part of the curatorial team until 2019. In 2020, she was the curator of the African Film Festival of Barcelona-FICAB. As part of her public engagement, she has been involved in further festivals in Spain, Senegal, South Africa and the United Kingdom, as a jury member, organiser, media officer, curator or panelist. She is one of the editors and journalists of Wiriko , an online magazine devoted to African arts and cultures, and contributes with further media platforms internationally, such as El País in Spain and Le Soleil in Senegal.

Research interests

Festival studies, global screen media, African cinema, Senegalese cinema, audiovisual representations of migration, music in film, youth and digital media, transnational communities and cultural distributions from “rooted cosmopolitans”, postcolonial studies, digital cultures, artistic research, audiovisual criticism, and archival research.

MPhil/PhD research

Thesis title: Two-tier festivals in Senegal between the local and the international: A Case Study of the Festival International de Folklore et de Percussion in Louga (Senegal)

Main supervisor: Dr Lindiwe Dovey

Second supervisor: Prof Friederike Lupke

Third supervisor: Dr Lucy Duran

SOAS, University of London

Department of African Languages and Cultures

Funding: SOAS Research Studentship from the Department of African Languages and Cultures

Research group

Transforming Creativity Research Group

Affiliate research groups

Intersectionality: Politics - Identities - Cultures Research Group , Centre for Democratic Futures , Film Festivals Research Network , PANFEST Archive Project , Compoliticas: Interdisciplinary Group of Studies in Communication, Politics and Social Change , Centre for Creative Industries, Media and Screen Studies

Estrella Sendra is part of the Teaching Team in the MA in Global Media Management. In 2020/21, she is the Module Leader of Global Media 1: Ideas and Debates, and Global Media 2: Industries and Technologies. She is also the Seminar Leader in Critical Media Practice and Supervisor of Final Projects.

Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez
Building 58
Room 58/3087


Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez's personal home page
Share Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on Weibo
Privacy Settings