Past PhD Research
NICA offers graduate courses for research master and PhD students, and serves as a professional network for affiliated scholars. Click on a year to see a list of completed PhD’s.
Completed PhD projects
2025
Inte Gloerich
Reimagining the Truth Machine: Blockchain Imaginaries Between the Rational and the More-than-Rational
Supervisor: prof. dr. M.A. Bleeker, prof. dr. J.M. Broersen, dr. M. Zeilinger | Utrecht University 2025
Irene Alcubilla Troughton
Moving Together: A Performing Arts Approach to Relational Human-Robot Interaction Design
Supervisor: prof. dr. M.A. Bleeker, prof. dr. K.V. Hinriks, dr. K. Baraka | Utrecht University 2025
Pengnan Hu
Derailing the Belt and Road: Film, Social Media Screen Culture, and Globalization from China
Supervisor: Prof. ir. B.J. de Kloet and Prof. P.P.R.W. Pisters | University of Amsterdam 2025
Yvette (Lok Yee Wong)
Wenyi and Its Discontents: A Study of Creative Practices and Politics in Hong Kong | 22 May 2025, Agnietenkapel, 10.00 hrs. | Supervisors: Jeroen) de Kloet, Leonie Schmidt
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jeroen de Kloet, Dr. Leonie Schmidt | University of Amsterdam 2025
2024
Andries Hiskes
Disability and its Affective Affordances: Deformity, Decay, Disruption, Distortion
Supervisor: Prof.dr. F.W.A. Korsten, dr. J. Sturm | Leiden University 2024
Tania Esteves Fernandes Cardoso
The Illustrated Cityscape. Imperfect Lines of Urban Exploration
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters and Dr. Ben Moore | University of Amsterdam 2024
Alvaro Lopez
Am I a Monster? Psychoanalysis, Global Fantasies, and Libidinal Reroutings in Contemporary
Horror Cinema
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters and Dr. Ben Moore | University of Amsterdam 2024
Aafje de Roest
De nieuwe golf: culturele identiteit in hedendaagse Nederlands(talig)e hiphop 2015 tot heden
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Yra van Dijk and Dr. Bram Ieven | Leiden University 2024
Ana Paula Saab
The unruly image: memory and transmission in Argentina
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, Prof. Dr. Maria Boletsi, dr. C. Wanschelbaum | Leiden University 2024
Zeynep Anli
Hope, destruction, and rebirth: acts of recovery in gender separatist feminist utopian literature
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. F.W. Korsten, dr. L. Minnaard | Leiden University 2024
Pieter Bots
Assessment of Artistic Quality
Supervisor: prof. dr. René Boomkens, | University of Amsterdam 2024
Karin Christof
Nadica Denić
2023
Moosje Goosen
Learning to Live With Ghosts. The Practice of Research
Supervisor: prof. dr. Esther Peeren, prof. dr. Patricia Pisters | University of Amsterdam 2023
Wouter Oomen
What Brings Us Together? Platforms, Common Humanity and the Challenges of Post-Humanitarian Communication
Supervisor: prof. dr. Sandra Ponzanesi, dr. Markus Stauff | Utrecht University 2023
Stacey Vorster
Curating Justice After Apartheid: South Africa’s Constitutional Court Art Collection
Supervisor: prof. dr. Christa Maria Lerm-Hayes, dr. Carrol Clarkson | University of Amsterdam 2023
Sandra Becker
Fathers of the nation: U.S. gender history, racial capitalism and white fatherhood in contemporary American TV series (2001-2016)
Supervisor: dr. Sara Strandvad, dr. Dan Hassler-Forest, dr. Timothy Jelfs | Utrecht University 2023
Oluchi Igili
Let´s Make the Law Because We Live the Law: New Perspectives on the Role of Political Theatre in Nigeria
Supervisor: prof. dr. Kati Röttger, dr. Sruti Bala | University of Amsterdam
Tjalling Valdés Olmos
Genres of Rurality. Contesting Normative Imaginations of the Globalized US Rural
Supervisors: prof. dr. Esther Peeren, dr. Jaap Kooijman | University of Amsterdam 2023
Anke Bosma
“I Don’t Think That’s Romantic At All!” Imagining the Dutch Rural in an Age of Globalization
Supervisors: prof. dr. Esther Peeren, prof. dr. Hanneke Stuit | University of Amsterdam 2023
2022
Argyrios Emmanouloudis
A Game of Pawns: Fan-Made Content and Resistance in Online Video Game Communities
Supervisors: Dr. Joyce Goggin | University of Amsterdam 2022
Wigbertson Julian Isenia
Queer Sovereignties: Cultural Practices of Sexual Citizenship in the Dutch Caribbean
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Rivke Jaffe, Dr. Sruti Bala and Prof. Dr. Rose Mary Allen | University of Amsterdam 2022
Andrés Ibarra Cordero
No Progress: Queer Chronotopes in Late Twentieth Century Fiction
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Murray Pratt (UvA), Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Andrés (U. Barcelona) | University of Amsterdam 2022
Ruby de Vos
Living with Toxicity: Disruptive Temporalities in Visual Art and Literature
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia Martin, Prof. Dr. Vera Alexander | Rijksuniversiteit Groningen 2022
Divya Nadkarni
Poetic understanding and political community: Actualizing plurality through poetry
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Ellen Rutten, Prof. Dr. Josef Früchtl | University of Amsterdam 2022
Maral Mohsenin
The Archives Must Go On: An Archaeology of Digital Image Technologies within European National Film Archives (1990-2020)
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Benoît Turquety, Prof. Dr. Giovanna Fossati | Université de Lausanne / University of Amsterdam 2022
Fan Yang
Chinese Women’s Cinema Through a Feminist Lens
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Misha Kavka | University of Amsterdam 2022
Halbe Kuipers
Perspectives and event: A study on modes of existence & the more-than human
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. P. Pisters. prof dr. E. Manning | University of Amsterdam 2022
2021
Arash Ghajarjarzi
Techniques of the Senses: 19th-centurt media and shiism in Iran
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Christian de Lange, Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab | Utrecht University 2021
Zexu Guan
Selling beauty in digital China: gender, platform, and economy
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Ernst van Alphen, Dr. Eliza Steinbock | Leiden University 2021
Becky Kazansky
What harms may come? Exploring the anticipatory dimensions of surveillance resistance in an age of datafication
Supervisors: Dr. Stefania Milana, Prof. dr. Richard Rogers | University of Amsterdam 2021
Tessa de Zeeuw
Postdramatic Legal Theatre: Space, Body, Media and Genre
Supervisor: Prof. dr. Frans-Willem Korsten| Leiden University 2021
Selçuk Balamir
Un Sustaining the Commodity-Machine: Commoning Practices in Postcapitalist Design
Supervisor: dr. Joost de Bloois | University of Amsterdam 2021
Anna Volkmar
Muddling Through Wicked Complexity: Why We Should Look at Art When We Talk About Nuclear Power
Supervisor: em. Prof. Dr. Robert Zwijnenberg | Leiden University 2021
David Gauthier
To execute, rewrite, and debug: On the construction and deconstruction of computation
Supervisors: prof. dr. Robin Boast and Prof. Dr. Iris van der Tuin | University of Amsterdam 2021
Rebecca Erickson
Middlebrow musical misogyny
Supervisors: prof. dr. Julia Kursell, dr. Barbara Titus | University of Amsterdam 2021
Jakko Kemper
Technological Aesthetics of Imperfection in Times of Frictionlessness
Supervisors: prof. dr. E. Rutten and dr. M.A.M.B. Baronian | University of Amsterdam 2021
Lonnie van Brummelen
Drifting Studio Practice
Supervisors: prof. dr. P. Pisters and dr. Henk Slager | University of Amsterdam 2021
Jan Overwijk
Rationalization. Paradoxes of Closure and Openness
Supervisors: prof. dr. René Boomkens; prof. dr. Robin Celikates | University of Amsterdam 2021
Elisa Fiore
Gentrification, Race, and the Senses: A Sensory Ethnography of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt and Rome’s Tor Pignattara
Supervisors: prof. dr. Liedeke Plate; prof. dr. Anneke Smelik | Radboud University 2021
Erdem Colak
Creating a new Europe through contemporary art: Manifesta and its relation to art, society and politics
Supervisors: prof. dr. C.M.K.E. Lerm-Hayes, dr. C. de Cesari | University of Amsterdam 2021
2020
Looi van Kessel
Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, Dr. Johanna Kardux | Leiden University 2020
Tingting Hui
Melodramas of the Tongue: Accented Speech in Literature, Art, and Theory
Supervisor: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen | Leiden University 2020
Jiyu Zhang
China redux: The central frontiers of the modern nation in Chinese cinema
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, Dr. Eliza Steinbock and Dr. Peter Verstraten | Leiden University 2020
Nadia de Vries
Digital Corpses: Creation, Appropriation, and Reappropriation
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren and Prof. dr. Ellen Rutten | University of Amsterdam 2020
Ozge Calafato
Posing for the Republic. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen in Vernacular Photographs from the 1920s and 1930s
Supervisors: prof. dr. Luiza Białasewicz, Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2020
Tycho Maas
The Cape Khoi in pre‐1652 European travelogues, an early modern Latin letter, and the South African novel Eilande (2002)
Supervisors: prof. dr. Yolande Jansen and prof. dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2020
Seth Rogoff
The Politics of the Dreamscape
Supervisors: prof. dr. Thomas Vaessens, Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2020
2019
Thijs Witty
Essays and measure. Apprenticeships in Genre
Supervisor: Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian and em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello | University of Amsterdam 2019
Simone Kalkman
Worlding Rio de Janeiro’s favelas: relations and representations of socio-spatial inequality in visual art
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Christof Lindner, Prof. dr. Kees Koonings, Dr. Carolyn Birdsall | University of Amsterdam 2019
Martin Rossouw
Transformational Ethics of Film: Thinking the Cinemakeover in the Film-Philosophy Debate
Supervisors: prof. dr. Annie van den Oever, prof. dr. Liesbeth Korthals Altes | University of Groningen 2019
Daniel de Zeeuw
Between Mass and Mask: The Profane Media Logic of Anonymous Imageboard Culture
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Robin Celikates & Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2019
Shuaishuai Wang
Living with Censorship: The Political Economy and Cultural Politics of Chinese Gay Dating Apps
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Jeroen de Kloet and dr. Rachel Spronk | University of Amsterdam 2019
Lin Jian
Schizoid creators: Creative work and subjectivity in the Chinese cultural economies
Supervisors: prof. dr. Jeroen De Kloet and prof. dr. Ned Rossiter | University of Amsterdam 2019
Anouk Zuurmond
Shared stories and creative dissonances : transnational literary projects and European identity
Supervisors: prof. dr. Thomas Vaessens | University of Amsterdam 2019
Olga Ryabets
Secret Theatre: Off-the-grid Performance Practices in Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia (1945 – 1989)
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Ellen Rutten, Prof. dr. Kati Röttger | University of Amsterdam 2019
Mimi Mitchell
The Revival of the Baroque Violin
Supervisor: prof. dr. Julia Kursell, prof. P K. Holman, dr. Barbara Titus | University of Amsterdam 2019
Paris Cameron-Gardos
Way Out: Re-Iterative Coming Out in Queer European Cinema
Supervisor: Em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello | University of Amsterdam 2019
Bahia Shebab
Unified multiplicities: Arabic letters between modernity, identity, and abstraction
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, prof. dr. S.M Hassan | Leiden University 2019
2018
Lonneke van der Velden
Surveillance as public matter: Revisiting sousveillance through devices and leaks
Supervisor: Prof. dr. Richard Rogers | University of Amsterdam 2018
Evelyn Wan
Clocked! Time and Biopower in the Time of Algorithms
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Maaike Bleeker | Utrecht University 2018
Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz
Transnational Material Politics: Constructions of Dutch Design, 1970-2012
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Ginette Verstraete, Prof. dr. Timo de Rijk, and Dr. Javier Gimeno Martínez | Free University 2018
Lianne Toussaint
Wearing Technology: When Fashion and Technology Entwine
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Anneke Smelik and prof.dr.ir. Peter-Paul C.C. Verbeek | Radboud University 2018
Mikki Stelder
Queering the occupation: From zionist sexual politics to Palestinian decolonial-queer imaginaries
Supervisor: em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello | University of Amsterdam 2018
Penn Ip
Female Migrant Workers Navigating the Service Economy in Shanghai: Home, Beauty, and the Stigma of Singlehood
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Jeroen de Kloet, Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2018
Alexander Paul Isiko
Gender Roles in Traditional Healing Practices in Busoga
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, Dr. Astrid van Weyenberg | Leiden University 2018
Ali Shobeiri
Place: Towards a Geophilosophy of Photography
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, Dr. Helen Westgeest | Leiden University 2018
Asli Ozgen Tuncer
The Image of Walking: The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters and prof. dr. Frank Kessler | Leiden University 2018
Alejandra Espinosa
The Politics of Public Construction in a Globalized World: Imagining Urban Space in Ecuador
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Christof Lindner and prof. dr. Esther Peeren | Leiden University 2018
Vesna Vravnik
After the Fall of the Pink Curtain: Alliances between Nationalists and Queers in Post-Yugoslavian Cinema
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello, dr. Srdjan Sremac | Leiden University 2018
Müge Ozoglu
No Man’s Land. Erotic Narratives in the Late Ottoman Empire
Supervisors: Em. Prof. Dr. Ernst van Alphen, dr. Petra de Bruijn| Leiden University 2018
2017
Eva Meijer
Political Animal Voices
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Yolande Jansen, Prof. dr. Robin Celikates | University of Amsterdam 2017
Cui Chen
The savage as living ghost: representations of Native Americans and scholarly failures to dismantle the notion of the savage
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Frans-Willem Korsten and Dr. Maria Boletsi | Leiden University 2017
Simon Ferdinand
I Map Therefore I am Modern: Cartography and Global Modernity in the Visual Arts
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Jeroen de Kloet & Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2017
Ilse van Rijn
The Artists’ Text as Work of Art
Supervisors: prof. dr. Thomas Vaessens, dr. Jeroen Boomgaard | University of Amsterdam 2017
Irene Villaescusa Illan
Writing the Nation: Transculturation and Nationalism in Hispano: Filipino Literature of the Early Twentieth Century
Supervisors: prof. dr. Jeroen De Kloet, Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2017
Teresa Havelkova
Opera as Hypermedium. Meaning-Making, Immediacy, and the Politics of Perception
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Rokus de Groot & Prof. dr. Maaike Bleeker | University of Amsterdam 2017
Mari Nakamura
Emancipation in postmodernity : political thought in Japanese science fiction animation
Supervisors: prof. dr. Cwierta Katarzyna, Dr. Florian Schneider | Leiden University 2017
2016
Judith Naeff
Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut: A City’s Suspended Now
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christof Lindner | University of Amsterdam 2016
Pedram Dibazar
Non-visibility and the politics of everyday presence: A spatial analysis of contemporary urban Iran
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christof Lindner | University of Amsterdam 2016
Annelies Kleinherenbrink
The Politics of Plasticity. Sex and Gender in the 21st Century Brain
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters | University of Amsterdam 2016
Ellen Kleijnen
Route to Reading. Promoting Reading through a School Library: Effects for non-Western Migrant Students
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frank Huysmans, Prof. Dr. Ed Elbers and dr. Rudy Ligtvoet | University of Amsterdam 2016
Melle Jan Kromhout
Noise Resonance. Technological Sound Recording and the Logic of Filtering
Supervisor: Dr. Sander van Maas | University of Amsterdam 2016
Eugen Octav Popa
Thought Experiments in Academic Communication
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Frans van Eemeren | University of Amsterdam 2016
Martijn Boven
Metaphor and metamorphosis: Paul Ricoeur and Gilles Deleuze on the emergence of novelty
Supervisor: prof. dr. B.P. van Heusden | University of Groningen 2016
Birkan Tas
Reclaiming Hope: Affect, Temporality, Politics
Supervisors: Dr. Murat Aydemir and em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello | University of Amsterdam 2016
Fabiola Camuti
The Trained Experience: A study on the Relationship between Meditation Practices and the Actor’s System of Knowledge
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Kati Röttger and dr. Roberto Ciancarelli | University of Amsterdam 2016
Jeffrey Manoel Pijpers
Sonic Resistance. Diaspora, Marginality and Censorship in Cuban and Brazilian Popular Music
Supervisors: em. Prof. Dr. Mieke Bal, Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren, dr. Cornelia Graebner | University of Amsterdam 2016
Amir Vodka
The Human Chameleon. Hybrid Jews in Cinema
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters | University of Amsterdam 2016
Paula Albuquerque
The Webcam as an Emerging Cinematic Medium
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters , dr. Jeroen Boomgaard | University of Amsterdam 2016
2015
Blandine Joret
Today, Icarus: On the persistence of André Bazin’s myth of total cinema
Supervisor: dr. Marie-Aude Baronian | University of Amsterdam 2015
Aylin Kuryel
Image acts and visual communities: everyday nationalism in contemporary Turkey
Supervisors: em. Prof. Dr. Mieke Bal and Prof. Dr. Esther Peeren | University of Amsterdam 2015
Miriam Meissner
Global Financial Crisis and the City: Narrative, Myth and the Urban Imaginary
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christoph Lindner | University of Amsterdam 2015
Lucy van der Wiel
Freezing fertility: Oocyte cryopreservation and the gender politics of ageing
Supervisors: em. Prof. Dr. Mieke Bal and Prof. Dr. Jose van Dijck| University of Amsterdam 2015
Renske Wierda
Experience-based authority argumentation in direct-to-consumer medical advertisements: An analytical and empirical study concerning the strategic anticipation of critical question
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Frans van Eemeren and Dr. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans | University of Amsterdam 2015
Tim Yaczo
Brains with character: Reading and writing neuronarrative
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Patricia Pisters and Dr. Jan Hein Hoogstad | University of Amsterdam 2015
Marie Beauchamps
Paradox of Sovereignty: Denaturalization in the Age of Globalization
Supervisor: em. Prof. Dr. Mirelle Rosello | University of Amsterdam 2015
2013
Philipp Schmerheim
Skepticism Films. Knowing and Doubting the World in Contemporary Cinema
Supervisor: prof. dr. Josef Früchtl | University of Amsterdam 2013