معرفی
Dr. Matilda Mroz is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, where she also serves as Honours Coordinator and School Social Inclusion Representative. She joined the University of Sydney in October 2020 after holding positions as Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Film Studies at the University of Greenwich, London. Dr. Mroz is a member of both the Sydney Environment Institute and the Charles Perkins Centre.
Dr. Mroz earned her BA (Hons) from the University of Sydney and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge (Faculty of English) in 2008. Her doctoral research formed the basis of her first monograph, Temporality and Film Analysis (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). Between 2008-2011, she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Cambridge and was the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College (2009-2011).
Dr. Mroz's research focuses on film theory, philosophy and aesthetics, with particular emphasis on global cinematic engagements with violence, genocide and death, Polish cinema, filmed environments and ecologies, and animals in film. Her work explores how film represents traumatic historical events, particularly the Holocaust in Polish visual culture, and how cinematic representations negotiate complex relationships between humans, animals, and environments in post-conflict spaces. She employs interdisciplinary approaches drawing from film-philosophy, eco-criticism, and memory studies to examine these topics.
Her recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on Polish cinematic responses to historical trauma, particularly regarding Polish-Jewish relations and Holocaust memory. The publications reveal a trajectory from early work on cinematic temporality to more recent explorations of posthumous ecologies and the materiality of violence in Holocaust film and art. Her research increasingly incorporates elemental approaches to world cinema, examining how earth, fire, water, and air function as cinematic elements across global film cultures.
Dr. Mroz has received numerous prestigious awards throughout her career:
- British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2019-2020)
- British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Women's Forum Article Prize, Honorable Mention (2019)
- Research Pump Priming Award, University of Greenwich (2015)
- British Academy Small Grants (2013-2015)
- Early Career Research Excellence Award, University of Greenwich (2013)
- Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellowship, Darwin College, University of Cambridge (2010-2011)
- British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of Cambridge (2008-2011)
Dr. Mroz currently supervises PhD students including Audrey MITCHELL, whose research examines "Gesture, Conversation, and 'Vision': Ethical Nodalities and Contemporary Cinema," and Lee STEENBERGEN, researching "Changing the Nature of Consumption in Documentary: The Foragers." She has secured significant research funding through British Academy fellowships and grants, focusing on Polish visual culture's engagement with Holocaust memory and post-conflict landscapes. Dr. Mroz serves on the editorial board of Film-Philosophy and is an active member of several scholarly associations including the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies, the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Her current research projects include "Framing the Holocaust in Polish Aftermath Cinema: Posthumous Materiality and Unwanted Knowledge," which examines how Polish film and visual culture has responded to recent historical scholarship concerning Polish acts of violence against Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust, and "Posthumous ecologies," which explores how moving images negotiate global histories of violence and conflict through the complex networks between human remains, landscapes, and their cinematic representation.
