Dr Estrella Sendra Fernandez
Teaching Fellow in Global Media Industries
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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.