Roel Vande Winkel

Roel Vande Winkel is a part-time Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Science at the Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, and a part-time Lecturer at LUCA School of Arts. He serves as the Belgian course director of the Joint Master of Arts in European Film Heritage, History, and Cultures (FilmMemory) at LUCA.

His educational background includes:

• Master of Arts in History
• Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies

His primary research focuses on media and cultural history, with special emphasis on film and media during the First and Second World Wars (1914-1945). He explores film and media at the crossroads of culture, economy, and ideology, particularly propaganda in Nazi Germany and occupied Belgium. Additional interests include Roman-Catholic approaches to audio-visual media (1928-2001), history of cinema-going, and film archives.

Vande Winkel's publications reveal a consistent focus on historical film studies, particularly the international expansion of Third Reich cinema and film censorship. His work often examines the intersection of religion and media, as seen in his research on the Roman Catholic Church's engagement with audio-visual media. He has co-edited significant volumes that have shaped discourse in film history and propaganda studies.

He supervises several PhD students in social sciences and the arts. His research grants include the following projects:

• Propaganda, Media, Culture and Public Life under the German Occupation (1940-1945) (2023-2027) - Promotor
• Drawing Lines: Unveiling the Scholarly Potential of Visual Storytelling (2024-2025) - Promotor
• Spectacle culture. An interdisciplinary platform for historical research into film, theater, dance and music performance (2016-2022) - Promotor
• Deradicalizing the city. Policy assemblage, security and the question of belonging in Brussels (2020-2024) - Co-promotor
• Critical Archives of Ordinariness: Vernacular Moving Image Practices and Migrant Identity in Polish Chicago (2023-2026) - Promotor
• Film, religion and politics: the 'Office Catholique International du Cinéma' (OCIC) and Italy (1948-1970) (2019-2020) - Promotor
• OCIC and UNDA. Foundations for longitudinal, comparative and transnational research into Roman Catholic approaches to audio-visual media (1928-2001) (2015-2017) - Promotor

He is affiliated with the Media Culture & Policy Lab at KU Leuven and the Art & Recollection unit in Brussels, which support interdisciplinary research in media history and cultural policy.