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News


Here is an overview of the recent activities of the project. Click on the image for more information.

25 June, 2026

Publication. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and David Bingong have published  “How Co-Creation Can Foster Epistemic Justice in Community-Based Research”, edited by Caroline Lenette and published in Sage Research Methods: Inclusive Research Methodologies. In this how-to guide, we reflect on the politics of cocreation at the intersection of media-making, inclusive research methodologies, and epistemic justice. Drawing on our long-term co-creative partnership around David's documentary feature Les Voyageurs (2025), we argue that co-creation is a situated, relational practice that is inherently political. The guide clarifies how “co-creation” has become a diffuse buzzword across policy, research, and cultural sectors as a matter of innovative technique, and proposes instead a grounded definition for arts- and media-based work committed to equality. We distil key conditions that make co-creation possible, such as trust, shared imagination, ethical responsibility, mutual empowerment, situatedness, and constant negotiations of power, showing how these become especially charged in border and migration contexts. The guide closes by outlining the main grey zones of co-creation and offering practical recommendations for ethically grounded practice.

Click here to read it.


20 June, 2026
Film screening. David Bingong presented The Travellers/Les Voyageurs as part of the event Bridges of Hospitality, organized by GRI GRI Pixel at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia.  Click here to know more.


20 June, 2026
Conference and book presentation. The team presented their new book, Kinotopias, currently in press with Edinburgh University Press, at the annual conference of NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) in Montpellier. More information about the book here.


16 May, 2026

Conference. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres participated in the panel “Agency on Screen: Participatory Filmmaking” as part of the conference “Slow Media Futures: Ethics, Ecology, and Creativity”, held at the historic venue of Kurfürstliches Schloss Mainz, Germany. Click here for more info.

29 April, 2026


Exhibition. The ABCeuta film collection is part of the art exhibition “Sedimented Stories” about the artistic work of Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and Miranda Devita Kistler at the art gallery G10 Projektraum in Darmstadt, Germany. More info here. 

20 April, 2026

Publication. The special issue of Qualitative Inquiry (Sage Journals) titled “Reorienting Collaborative-Creative Methodologies: Reflexive Devices in the Interplay of Ethnographic and Mobility Research” is online, a collection on collaborative-creative methodologies in migration and mobility research co-edited by Silvia Almenara-Niebla, Kevin Smets and Amanda Alencar . These papers explore how collaborative and creative research can work as reflexive devices in qualitative/ethnographic research. Read and download the open access article here.

12 March, 2026


PhD defence. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres became a Doctor of Media and Communication with honours after successfully defending her PhD, “Reframing the EU's Borderscape: Participatory Filmmaking as Placemaking'. The jury was formed by Josetxo Cerdán, Amada Alencar, Paolo Favero, and Sue Subdury. Congratulations Irene!

5 February, 2026

Publication. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and Kevin Smets, along with co-authors Caroline Lenette, Isobel Blomfield, and Alhouseine Diallo, published the paper titled “Beyond Tokenism: Strategies to Co-Disseminate With Migrant Co-Researchers and Expand Their Roles in Neoliberal Academia” in Qualitative Inquiry (Sage Journals) as part of the special issue “Reorienting Collaborative–Creative Methodologies: Reflexive Devices in the Interplay of Ethnographic and Mobility Research”, co-edited by Silvia Almenara-Niebla, Amanda Alencar and Kevin Smets. Read and download the open access article here. 

20 January, 2026

Screening and seminar. Kevin Smets and Irene Gutiérrez-Torres presented three short films and participated in a discussion, together with Giuseppe Fidotta and Annamaria Neag, during a public event of Studium Generale. The next day, they presented the project during a seminar at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies (University of Groningen). More info here.

18 December, 2025

Seminar. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres presented the paper "ABCeuta: Informing policy makers through autoethnographic participatory filmmaking" as part of the round table "Borders, (participatory) art practices, academic research and impact" at CESSMIR, Ghent University. More info here. 

3 December, 2025

Seminar. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres presented the paper “Reframing Europe’s Borderscape: Participatory Filmmaking as Placemaking” during the International Seminar on Visual Methodologies at LISER, Luxemburg Institute of Socio-Economic research. More info here.
27 November, 2025
Film screening. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and David Bingong presented The Travellers/Les Voyageurs as part of the Europalia programme 2025 at at Kask, Ghent.  Lennart Soberon moderated the Q&A after the screening. Click here to know more.

18-23 November, 2025 


Film Festival. Les Voyageurs received a Jury Special Mention at Rizoma Festival Interncional de Cine y Cultura Entrelazada (Spain). Click here for more info.


21-23 November, 2025

Film Festival. Les Voyageurs is part of the Best of Fest official selection IDFA - International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). More info here.

18 November, 2025

Seminar.  Kevin Smets and Irene Gutiérrez-Torres gave the seminar ‘Reel Borders: Displacement, Activism and Participatory Filmmaking’ at the NYU, Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, Co-sponsored by NYU Migration Network. Click here for more information. 

19 October, 2025

Award. The Travellers/Les Voyageurs by David Bingong is awarded with the prestigious John Grierson Award at the BFI London Film Festival (UK). More info here.

18 September, 2025

Award. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres won the Best Paper Award Emerging Scholar at the Diaspora, Migration and the Media - International and Intercultural Communication Sections Conference 'Beyond Borders: Creative Methods and Reflexive Approaches to Migration, Media, and Intercultural Dialogue' at Tallinn University with the paper ‘Autoethnographic Participatory Filmmaking at the Moroccan-Spanish Border: Counter-Narratives and Counter-Geographies in the Post-COVID-19 Era’, to be published in the Journal Alphaville.  More info here.


17 September, 2025

Conference. The Reel Borders team participated at the ECREA Diaspora, Migration and the Media - International and Intercultural Communication Sections Conference 'Beyond Borders: Creative Methods and Reflexive Approaches to Migration, Media, and Intercultural Dialogue' at Tallinn University. More information here.

14 September, 2025
Award. The Travellers/Les Voyageurs by David Bingong won the Harrell Award Special Jury Mention at the prestigious Camden International Film Festival (US). Click here for more info. 

3 September, 2025
Article. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres, Silvia Almenara-Niebla and Kevin Smets published about participatory filmmaking and the ABCeuta webdoc in Sensate: A Journal for Experiments in Critical Media Practice. Find out more here.


17 July, 2025

Article. Lennart Soberon published a new paper titled “Borderwork as artistic practice” in Geopolitics. Read more here.


16 July, 2025

Film festival and award. Dragon’s Teeth won the Best Short Documentary award at the Galway Film Fleadh. Click here for more.


7 July, 2025

Conference. Silvia Almenara-Niebla was invited to participate on the roundtable of the conference Space of Imagination as part of the ERA Chair on Imagination and Society at Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. More information here.


16 June, 2025

Exhibition. ‘Border’, part of the ABCeuta films, was selected for an online educational exhibition for the 40th anniversary of the Schengen agreement. More information here. Two articles about the exhibition are published in El Faro Melilla and Swiss Info.


31 May, 2025

Screening and workshop. A selection of ten Reel Borders videos, part of the ABCeuta collection, was screened during a workshop and roundtable session in Oujda, Morocco, together with the Association Marocaine d’Aide aux Migrants en Situation Vulnérable (AMSV). More info here. 



26 May, 2025

Film festivals. Les Voyageurs is part of the official selection of the FCAT (Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa), which includes screenings with Q&A in Tarifa and Córdoba (Spain), and Tangier (Morocco). Click here for a TV interview with the directior David Bingong and here for a newspaper article (in Spanish). 


23 May, 2025

Award. Les Voyageurs won the jury prize for the best medium length film offered by the Clinique de Genolier. It was projected during the Visions du Réel Festival in Nyon, Switzerland.  More info here.


20 May, 2025


Seminar. Reel Borders hosted a research seminar by Federica Mazzara (University of Westminster). More info here.

24 April, 2025

Film festival. The four short films resulting from the filmmaking workshop in Adana (Turkey) were presented and screened as part of the main programme at the Izmir Refugee Film Festival.



22 April, 2025


Television interview and screening. Live interview with Lakbira Ijamai and Irene Gutiérrez Torres about the ABCeuta participatory filmmaking workshop on the morning programme of TeleCeuta. From May onwards, TeleCeuta will weekly screen a selection of the films. Watch the interview here.

3 April, 2025


Conference presentation. Kevin Smets presented ongoing work on film in Rojava (Northern Syria) at the annual SCMS conference. More info here.


27 February, 2025

New research article. Lennart Soberon published a new paper in Cultural Studies (advance online publication). It reports on ethnographic research and over 50 interviews and discusses different modes of remembering in Northern Ireland’s film and TV industry. Read the full paper here.

21 February, 2025


YECREA representative. Irene Gutiérrez is the new YECREA Film Studies section representative. Responsible for the participatory filmmaking WP of Reel Borders, her contribution will focus on building bridges between film and migration/border studies, as well as promoting film as an epistemological and methodological tool. More information about the next ECREA Film Studies conference here.

21 February, 2025

Book chapter. Irene Gutiérrez contributed a chapter to the new edition of the Global Migration Encyclopedia: New Mobilities and Artivism. Full access and more information here.


6 February, 2025
New blogpost. Kevin Smets published a post on the Media@LSE blog, as part of his research stay at the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics & Political Science. Read more here.

4 December, 2024
 New article. Lennart Soberon published a new article, together with Gertjan Willems, in New Review of Film and Television Studies. Find out more here.

27 November, 2024

Research seminar. Kevin Smets was invited to give a research seminar on Reel Borders at the University of Warwick. More information here.
24 November, 2024

Film screening. The ABCeuta film collection, the resulting films of the participatory filmmaking workshop in Ceuta, was screened at the Wetenschapsfestival Brussel. More information here.

9 November, 2024

Keynote lecture. Kevin Smets was invited to give a keynote lecture at the conference “Mediterranean Crossings”. More information here.

4 November, 2024


Film screening. A new Reel Borders short film, written and directed by Lennart Soberon, was presented at the 24th Belfast Film Festival. Read more here.

28 October, 2024

Digital Ethnography for Public Engagement. Silvia Almenara-Niebla was invited to participate in the roundtable of this seminar at Utrecht University. Read more here.
25 October, 2024

Congreso Internacional Transidentidades, Subjetividades, Exilios, Escrituras. Irene Gutiérrez participated in the conference hosted by Universidad de Granada. More info here.



24 October, 2024


ERC Public Engagement with Research Award. Reel Borders was selected as a finalist for the European Research Council’s awards. Read more here.

16 October, 2024
Book chapter. Kevin Smets contributed a chapter to the new edition of the Handbook of Research Methods in Migration. Full access and more information here.

28 September, 2024

Film festival screening. The four short films resulting from our participatory filmmaking workshop in Adana, Turkey, premiered at the International Adana Golden Boll Film Festival. Read more here.


25 September, 2024

10th ECREA Conference. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated in the conference hosted by Ljubljana University. More info here.



16 September, 2024


Festival award. Sally Hllouby, the co-trainer of the participatory filmmaking workshop we held in Adana, Turkey, won the special jury award at Directed by Women festival in Istanbul with her essay film We Were There. More information here.


11 September, 2024


Article in Irish Studies Review. Lennart Soberon and Kevin Smets published a new article based on a close reading of 43 narrative feature films (1937-2021) featuring the border. More information here.

5-6 September, 2024


Reel Borders at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Kevin Smets and Silvia Almenara-Niebla were invited to give a seminar on borders and visual methods. More information here.


29 July, 2024

Article in Social & Cultural Geography. Silvia Almenara-Niebla has published a new paper in Social & Cultural Geography based on activists’ intimate experiences in the borders of Ceuta and Melilla. More information here.


04 July, 2024

Reel Borders at IMISCOE Annual Conference. The Reel Borders team delivered a workshop at the annual conference of IMISCOE. More information here.


28 June, 2024

Reel Borders at NECS Conference. The Reel Borders team delivered two presentations at the annual conference of NECS. More information here.

20 June, 2024


Presentation at RFN Conference. Kevin Smets participated in the 2024 Radical Film Network conference in Madrid, presenting on archives in participatory filmmaking. Click here for more info.


08 May, 2024

Reel Borders at ISSS. Lennart Soberon joined the Irish Screen Studies Seminar in Belfast to present his research on Northern Irish cinema. Click here to read more on the event.

08 May, 2024

Reel Borders at CurieuCity. Our Ceuta films were featured at CurieCity! In presence of filmmaker Irene Gutiérrez, we screened our films and gave an Q&A. Read more about the event here.


16 April, 2024

Reel Borders Shorts Screening. Our participatory filmmaking short “Crossing Lines” by Margaret Gordon was part of the “Reel Lives” screening at the Nerve Centre theatre in Derry last week. Click here to find out more about the event. 


15 April, 2024

Silvia Almenara-Niebla at Euronews. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated at another Euronews debate on the EU’s new migration and asylum pact last week. More on the 30-minute long discussion can be found here.


03 April, 2024

Reel Borders in the spotlight! We are proud to have our project highlighted on the CORDIS EU Research Results website: "Seeing the EU’s borders through the eyes of its migrant workers: Workshops, web documentaries and petitions – these are just some of the tools that Reel Borders is using to amplify the voices of the EU's undocumented migrant women". Read the piece, translated into six languages, here.



02 April,  2024
Blog entry. Irene Gutiérrez has recently posted a new entry on the IMISCOE PhD blog. Her post pertains to the editorial of the 2024 Special Issue titled “How to make research more engaged: positionality, inequalities, and access”. This initiative has been taken by the IMISCOE PhD Network blog group. You can find more information by clicking here.

08 March,  2024

ABCeuta. We are proud to launch our webdoc ABCeuta.film on International Women’s Day to highlight the precarious situation of domestic workers in Ceuta. You can support them by signing our petition and reading more about the project here.

27 February, 2024

Blog entry. Irene Gutiérrez has published a new entry in the IMISCOE PhD blog titled “On Participatory Filmmaking in Borderlands (II)”. Click here for more information.

16 February, 2024
Book chapter. Irene Gutiérrez has published a new book chapter in Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday (edited by Koen Leurs and Sandra Ponzanesi, Amsterdam University Press) titled “Archival Participatory Filmmaking in Migration and Border Studies”. Click here for more information.


5 February, 2024

Article in Emotion, Space and Society. Silvia Almenara-Niebla and Kevin Smets have published a new paper in Emotion, Space and Society based on cinematic experiences in the Irish borderlands. Click here for more information.

24-25 January, 2024

II Congreso de Fronteras Ibéricas. Silvia Almenara-Niebla and Irene Gutiérrez presented their papers titled "Understanding Border Emotions through Film: Activism and Violent Ignorance at the Ceuta-Melilla Border" and "Trapped in Ceuta: Uncovering the Coloniality-Immobility Nexus through Participatory Filmmaking" at the II Congress of Iberian Borders at the University Complutense of Madrid. Click here for more information.


21 November, 2023

Agents of Concern opens. Last week, the exhibition at PXL Mad opened, featuring our Reel Borders shorts! You can find out more here.



17 November, 2023
AAA/CASCA. Silvia Almenara presented the paper “Mediating Emotions in Migration Research” at the AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada. More information here.

02 November, 2023

Reel Borders at Agents of Concern. Featuring a diverse set of international artists and scholars, the exhibition explores how images spark engagement, empathy, and action. You can find out more here.

25 October, 2023
Reel Borders Shorts at Clones. We are proud to announce that our Reelborders shorts created during the will be screened at Clones Film Festival on Sat 28 October at 12 pm. You can find out more here.

19 October, 2023
Academic article. Irene Gutiérrez-Torres has contributed an article to the journal Migration Studies. Drawing on three months of ethnographic and participatory filmmaking research on the Moroccan-Spanish border, she focuses on the need for a reflexive approach to this methodology as a site for decolonial thinking when applied to migration and border studies. Read more here.
12 October, 2023
 Presentation at European Parliament. The team presented short films and participated in a discussion on labour, gender and mobility alongside members of the parliament and policy experts. More information here.

12 October, 2023
Hazar Deniz Eker joins the Reel Borders team. Joining as a PhD student, he will focus within the project on how visual media reflect and interact with socio-cultural bordering practises and political dynamics in the Turkish-Syrian border region. You can find the entire team here.


3 October, 2023

Participatory filmmaking workshop in Adana. Irene Gutiérrez started the collaboration with Özgür Sinematek with 25 Turkish students from the Faculty of Media and Communication at Çukurova University. The workshop’s main aim is to promote dialogue between Turkish and Syrian students on campus and Syrian displaced people living in Adana since 2014. More info here.


25-29 September, 2023

Conference participation. Reel Borders was represented at the kick-off conference of the new SOLROUTES project. More information here.


22 September, 2023

Film screening. The Irish Film Institute has included the four Reel Borders shorts created by nine filmmakers during the participatory filmmaking workshop set at the Nerve Centre in Derry in the Culture Night 2023 programme. More informationhere.
21 September, 2023

Film screening.The Nerve Centre has programmed a special film screening with seven Reel Borders shorts from the participatory filmmaking workshops in Ireland and Ceuta. More information here.


11 September, 2023

ICRMC. Silvia Almenara and Irene Gutiérrez presented the paper “Using Audiovisual Methods in Borderlands: Empirical, ethical and methodological dilemmas” at the International Creative Research Methods Conference. More information here.


24 August, 2023

Film screening. Reel Borders was invited to present a special pre-conference screening at the EFACIS conference at Queen’s University Belfast. More information here.
16 August, 2023

Book chapter. Lennart Soberon and Kevin Smets contributed a chapter to the new book “Creating Europe from the margins”, focusing on border securitization in popular media like reality TV. Read more here.

5 July, 2023

IMISCOE annual conference. How Participatory Filmmaking interacts with existing power relations and roles? Irene Gutiérrez presented the paper 'Self-representational Participatory Filmmaking in Ceuta: Reflexivity as a Plea for Border Women Encounters' at the IMISCOE annual conference panel on methods, methodologies and reflexivity. To read more, click here.

26 June, 2023

Docs Ireland. Our four shorts resulting from our participatory filmmaking workshop in the Nerve Centre, Derry, will be featured in the Docs Ireland film festival programme. On Sunday, the 25th of June, at 12.30 pm at The Black Box in Belfast. You can read the complete new here.
24 June, 2023

Euronews. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated in the TV programme “Bruselas, ¿te quiero? to debate on the EU migration and asylum pact. More info here.


23 June, 2023

Migration and Societal Change. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated in the panel Digital theories and methodologies from the South(s) at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. More info here.

3 May, 2023


Difference Day. Our team members Irene Gutiérrez and Kevin Smets discussed with journalist and filmmaker Sara Creta about the importance of citizens’ voices to contest European bordering practices. You can read the full new here.

25 April, 2023

Migration Podcast. Kevin Smets was interviewed for the podcast series of IMISCOE, the International Migration Research Network. You can listen to the podcast here.

13 March, 2023

Belgian-Irish Film Festival. The Reel Borders team is proud to have contributed to the next edition of Scéal Eile: The Belgian-Irish Film Festival with the four films created during our participatory filmmaking workshop at the Nerve Centre in Derry. More info here.

6 March, 2023

UCL Research seminar. Kevin Smets gave a talk as part of the UCL Anthropology research seminar “Material, Visual and Digital Culture” at the UCL. More info here.

11 February, 2023

Turkey-Syria earthquake. The Reel Borders team expresses its solidarity with the Turkish-Syrian region hit by the earthquake of 6 February. We share a letter of our project partner from Adana. Read more here.

13 January, 2023


BIRMM Research Day. Irene Gutiérrez participated in the panel on “Migration and its experiences” at BIRMM, VUB. More info here.


2 December, 2022

Guest Lecture. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated as guest-lecture in a seminar for Anthropology undergraduate students at the University of Granada, Spain. More info here.


25 November, 2022

“Triang Times” rough cut screening. Emer, Manus and Michael, three of the filmmakers of the Reel Borders workshop at Nerve Centre, organised a screening of their short film for a local audience at the Allingham Festival of Ballyshannon. More information here.


22 November, 2022

The Marrakech International Film Festival. Lennart Soberon attended the MIFF as part of his fieldwork in Morrocco. More info here.


21 November, 2022

Reel Borders on Spanish national TV. The voice of some of the participants of the filmmaking workshop in Ceuta was raised on RTVE, where they talked about their short films as a site for visualizing their unstable situation, lasting for decades despite living and working in Ceuta. More info here.

17 November, 2022

Migratlantes 2022 II Encuentro de Migraciones Atlánticas. Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated as guest-speaker in the conference hosted by the Canary Islands’ Government (Spain). More info here.

08 November, 2022

Reel Borders covered by RTVCE. The launch of the participatory filmmaking workshop in Ceuta was covered by the public TV channel RTVCE. More info here.

03 November, 2022

Participatory filmmaking workshop and cineforum in Ceuta. Irene Gutiérrez and Silvia Almenara-Niebla are collaborating with the Association Digmun in Ceuta to conduct a participatory filmmaking workshop and cineforum. The workshop will last for three months and involve 13 Moroccan women, who will be making short documentary films while reflecting on their experiences of forced immobility after the COVID-19 pandemic border reinforcement. Additionally, the women will be discussing films related to this topic. More info here.


27 October, 2022

Book panel at Cinematek. Kevin Smets discussed his book at the Royal Belgian Film Archive together with Dorothée van den Berghe and Sahim Omar Kalifa. More info here.


21 October, 2022

9th ECREA Conference. Kevin Smets and Silvia Almenara-Niebla participated in the conference hosted by Aarhus University. More info here.


13 October, 2022


Book launch at Film Fest Gent. Kevin Smets launched his book at a ‘Talkie’ during Film Fest Gent. More info here.


21 September, 2022

CESSMIR Conference. Lennart Soberon participated in the conference hosted by Ghent University. More info here.

16 August, 2022

International Migration. Silvia Almenara-Niebla has published a book review of Visual Methodology in Migration Studies. More info here.


1 August, 2022

L’Atalante Revista de Estudios Cinematográficos published “Archives-In-The-Making, Vulnerable Communities and Migration”. The Reel Borders team participates in a discussion as part of the (Dis)Agreements section of the journal. More info here.


5 July, 2022

Antwerp Summer University “Europe: Diversity and Migration”.  Irene Gutiérrez gave a guest lecture about migrants self-representation in Europe. More info here.

5 July, 2022

HoMER Network. Silvia Almenara-Niebla and Kevin Smets were part of the conference hosted by Sapienza University of Rome. More info here.


30 June, 2022


IMISCOE annual conference 2022. Irene Gutiérrez presented the paper “Methodological and Ethical Challenges in Doing Participatory Filmmaking among migrants”. More info here.


16 June, 2022


Irish Border Narratives. Lennart Soberon was part of the conference organized by University of Wuppertal. More info here.


2 June, 2022


Film, Migration & the Archive. Irene Gutiérrez and Kevin Smets were part of the conference organized by the ECREA Film Studies section. More info here.



30 May, 2022

International Communication Association. Lennart Soberon and Kevin Smets presented a paper at the annual ICA conference. The paper was one of the four finalists for the Top Paper Award. More info here.

6 May, 2022


Irish Screen Studies Seminar. Lennart Soberon participated with a presentation on a thematic analysis of the Irish Border on Screen. More info here.


5 May, 2022



Methodology workshop. Kevin Smets led a workshop on visual and participatory research methods in migration research. More info here.


April 9- June 11, 2022


Participatory Filmmaking. For nine weeks our team member Irene Gutiérrez will be in Derry doing a participatory filmmaking workshop with people living in the area thanks to the collaboration of Nerve Centre, the Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Archive and the Irish Film Archive. More info and registrations here.


8 April, 2022


Blog entry. Irene Gutiérrez has published a new entry in the IMISCOE PhD blog titled “On Participatory Filmmaking in Borderlands (I)”. Click here for more information.


November 29- March 28, 2021-2022



Reel Borders Workshops. To finalise our first project year we have set up three workshops on theoretical, methodological and ethical aspects of the different sub-studies of Reel Borders. During these workshops key academic experts set around the table with the project team to reflect on these aspects and to prepare the forthcoming empirical work. More info here.


February 11, 2022

Etmaal Conference. On 11 February our team presented papers on "Borderscaping through audiovisual participatory methods" as well as on "Borderveillant spectatorship" at Etmaal Conference 2022,  the conference bringing together Dutch and Belgian communication scholars across all fields.


January 26, 2022


Border talk. On 26 January our member team Irene Gutiérrez talked about the link between borders and cinema at the online event "Borders - Borders and Border Regions in Contemporary Art Production and Art Theory" at the Technical University of Darmstadt.  



November 1-10, 2021



Fieldwork. For the past 10 days the reel Borders team was in Ireland and Northern Ireland doing archival research, interviews, and meetings with project partners… and enjoying the Belfast Film Festival.



October 12, 2021

Mindblowers. Reel Borders researcher and filmmaker Irene Gutiérrez took part in the recent edition of Mindblowers, an event organized by KVS (Royal Flemish Theatre) and VUB.


October 7, 2021




Diaspora, Migration and Media. Reel Borders welcomes the election of the project's postdoctoral researcher, Silvia Almenara-Niebla, as vice-chair of ECREA's Diaspora, Migration and the Media section.




July 6, 2021


Advisory board. Reel Borders presents its advisory committee that will guide the team's researchers in areas such as border studies, film and migration, as well as the project's case studies.



June 17, 2021

Workshop. Irene Gutiérrez, PhD candidate on Reel Borders’ project, has participated in the 18th NECS Graduate Workshop with her paper on methodological and ethical challenges in the research of the video footage recorded by undocumented African migrants at the Moroccan-Spanish border.



May 17, 2021


Guest lecture. Migration: a media and cultural studies perspective. Part of the Honors Program ‘The societal challenge of migration’ at Tilburg University.
   


April 29, 2021



Lecture. Migration and visual cultures: methodological reflections and strategies as part of the NECS (Network for Cinema and Media Studies) lecture series on media and migration.


April 29, 2021


Guest lecture. Europe and its borders: Between national sovereignty and (im)mobility policies. The cases of Ceuta and Melilla. For the master course ‘Media, Culture & Globalization Theories’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.


April 21, 2021


Screening + Presentation. Screening of Bab Sebta (2019) by Randa Maroufi and presentation of the project Reel Borders at the Migrant Belongings Conference (Utrecht University).
Reel Borders uses participatory filmmaking as one of its core methodologies, led by Irene Gutiérrez-Torres. Participatory Filmmaking (PF), also known as Participatory Video (PV), refers to a set of methods and techniques through which a group or community becomes actively involved in shaping, producing and circulating their own films. It forms part of a broader family of participatory visual arts methods, with roots in pioneer experiences of citizen engagement through cinema, from the Film-Eye movement in the 1920s to the Fogo Process in the 1960s.

Our empirical research draws on three PF workshops held on the Irish border, the Ceuta exclave at the Moroccan-Spanish border, and the Turkish city of Adana, near the Syrian border. Across these sites, Reel Borders explores both the potentials and challenges of PF in border and migration research, asking how participatory film practices can open safe spaces for situated knowledge and alternative ways of seeing and narrating borders.




Participatory filmmaking workshops






The Irish Border
(Outputs: 4 shorts)

The Morrocan - Spanish Border
(Output: a webdoc with 26 shorts)












Reel Borders Collaborative Films



Les Voyageurs/The Travellers by David Bingong

Dragon’s Teeth by Lennart Soberon





  













Publications

A list of academic publications by our team members. More publications coming soon! For the collection of Reel Borders short films, go to our pages on participatory filmmaking  and the webdoc ABCeuta.

Book

Articles

Book chapters


Reviews

Other Publications 

Reel Borders is a 5-year research project focusing on the relations between film and borders. It studies how for the past 120 years film has been used to imagine borders in diverse ways. Acknowledging that borders are more than territorial lines or infrastructures, the project also considers questions of belonging, identity and imagination.

Reel Borders approaches this topic through different societal actors such as governmental institutions, artists and activists, asking how they use film to construct, contest or experience the border. The often blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction film are a fruitful starting point to explore these questions.

Reel Borders concentrates on 3 borderlands and regions: the Irish border, the Spanish-Moroccan border and its Ceuta and Melilla exclaves, and the Turkish-Syrian border. Methodologically, the project combines film analysis, expert interviews, production analysis and participatory filmmaking.

Below you find further information about the case studies in each map. More information about methodology will be added as the project progresses.


Reel Borders received funding from the European Research Council, Starting Grant (#948278, 2021-2026) and is based at the Communication Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.


The team






Kevin Smets

Principal investigator

Kevin Smets is associate professor at the Department of Communication Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He is the coordinator and principal investigator of Reel Borders. More info.







Irene Gutiérrez

PhD researcher

Irene Gutiérrez is a PhD fellow and award-winning documentary filmmaker from Ceuta. In the Reel Borders project, she will focus on vernacular border cinema. More info.


Former Affiliates






Yazan Badran

Postdoctoral researcher

Yazan Badran holds a PhD in media and communication studies. He contributed to data collection and analysis in the Reel Borders project. More info.




Hazar Deniz Eker

Research assistant

Hazar Deniz Eker contributed to the research on the Turkish-Syrian border region and to the project’s dissemination.





Silvia Almenara Niebla

Postdoctoral researcher

Silvia Almenara Niebla holds a PhD in gender and migration studies.  In the Reel Borders project, she will concentrate on everyday cinematic experiences of borderlanders, as well as social and political dynamics of borders. More info.




Lennart Soberon 

Postdoctoral researcher

Lennart Soberon holds a PhD in film studies. In the Reel Borders project, he will concentrate on film analysis and data, as well as institutional and audience dynamics. More info.


Nadica Denić

Researcher

 Nadica Denić is a media scholar and curator. As a short-term researcher for Reel Borders, she will concentrate on cinema and risk. More info.


Administrative support

Christel Vaeremans (VUB Department of Communication Studies), Willem Joris (VUB ECHO research group), Maryam Kamal Hedayat

Research interns

Hannah Wilmots
Hazar Deniz Eker
Juli Reithinger

Fieldwork partners

University of Granada (Ceuta and Melilla campus): Antonia Olmos Alcaraz
 Queen’s University Belfast: Katy Hayward
Çukurova University Adana: İlke Şanlıer, Aydın Çam, Kıvanç Türkgeldi, Aslı Ilgıt & Özge Nilay Erbalaban Gürbüz

Assistants

Djager al-Yussef, Sara Albert Salmerón, Camillo Azua Contreras, Diana Cheung, Melodía Gallardo, Sally Hllouby, Michael Lynch, Joanna Maguire-Charlat, Gülin Ören, Niall David Plumb, Sarah Raïs Janss, Joren Steenput, Lola Valdés, Louise Van Nerum, Tuna Mıstıkoğlu, Emre Atakan Oruç, Melis Gurses and Tulya Su Güven.

Advisory Committee

Ramazan Aras (Ibn Haldun University); Jamal Bahmad (Mohamed V University Rabat); Ruth Barton (Trinity College Dublin); Chokri Ben Chikha (KASK School of Arts); Josetxo Cerdán Los Arcos (University Carlos III of Madrid & Filmoteca Española); Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway University of London); Lindiwe Dovey (SOAS University of London); Xavier Ferrer-Gallardo (Pompeu Fabra University); Camilla Fojas (University of Virginia); Myria Georgiou (London School of Economics); Yasmin Ibrahim (Queen Mary University London); Jelena Jureša (KASK School of Arts); Suncem Koçer (Kadir Has University); Sandro Mezzadra (University of Bologna); Cathal McCall (Queen’s University Belfast); Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University); Johan Schimanski (University of Oslo); Belinda Smaill (Monash University); Nick Vaughan-Williams (University of Warwick)


© Profile pictures by Thierry Geenen




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Funded by the European Research Council.
Starting Grant #948278
The Reel Borders logo is designed by Joris Bochman
The Reel Borders website was built by Irene Gutiérrez-Torres and Silvia Almenara-Niebla