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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

Longing for Autonomy: Citizen Professionals Engaging for the Common Good
Supervisors: prof. dr. René Boomkens, prof. dr. Jan Willem Duyvendak | University of Amsterdam 2024

Nadica Denić

Cinematic Ethics of Migration: First-Person Voices in Contemporary Documentary
Supervisors: prof. dr. Patricia Pisters, dr. Carolyn Birdsall | University of Amsterdam 2024

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

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NICA archive 2010 – 2020

Read all articles published by Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis 2010 to 2020.

Affiliated Universities

  • Leiden University
  • Tilburg University
  • Radboud University
  • University of Amsterdam
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
  • University of Maastricht
  • Utrecht University
  • Open University

National Research Schools

  • ARCHON, Research School of Archaeology
  • Huizinga Instituut
  • LOT, Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics
  • NISIS, Netherlands Interuniversity School of Islamic Studies
  • NOG, Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies
  • NOSTER, Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion
  • OIKOS, National Research School in Classical Studies
  • OSK, Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History
  • OSL, Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap
  • OZSW, Dutch Research School of Philosophy
  • Posthumus Institute, Research School for Economic and Social History
  • Research School for Medieval Studies
  • RSPH, Research School Political History
  • RMeS, Research School for Media Studies
  • WTMC, Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture

Useful Links

  • Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA)
  • Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR)
  • Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
  • Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
  • Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM)
  • Babylon: Center for the Study of Superdiversity, Tilburg University
  • Benelux Association for the Study of Art, Culture, and the Environment (BASCE)
  • Centre for BOLD Cities
  • Centre for Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University
  • Leiden University Centre for Cultural Analysis (LUCAS)
  • Platform for Postcolonial Readings
  • Radboud Institute for Culture & History (RICH)
  • Research Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies (PTR)
  • Environmental Humanities Center Amsterdam
  • Centre for Environmental Humanities (UU)
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