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

Kinotopias. Film, place, and belonging in a bordered world. Forthcoming, by Kevin Smets, Lennart Soberon, Irene Gutiérrez Torres & Silvia Almenara-Niebla. To be published in the ‘Political Cinemas’ series, Edinburgh University Press.

Articles

‘Archives in the making, vulnerable communities and migration: Outreach and innovative scholarship in audiovisual-based research projects and associations’. 2022, by Matteo Al Kalak, Silvia Almenara-Niebla, Antoine Damiens, Miguel Fernández Labayen, Gianluca Gatta, Irene Gutiérrez Torres, Janine Marchessault, Elena Oroz, Shane O’Sullivan, Kevin Smets, Lennart Soberon, Sandro Triulzi & Michael Zryd. L’Atalante 34: 177-208. [also translated into Spanish]
‘Refugee hybrid fiction: Rhetorical, generic and intermedial hybridity as strategies of political resistance’. 2022, by Giacomo Toffano & Kevin Smets. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 14(2).
‘Trapped in Ceuta: Reflexive tactics and methods in participatory filmmaking among cross-border women’. 2023, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. Migration Studies, 12(3): mnad031.
‘Bordering cinematic experiences: Emotional narratives in the Irish borderland’. 2024, by Silvia Almenara-Niebla & Kevin Smets. Emotion, Space & Society 50(8).
‘Entering the Walloon Gothic: nationalist border crossing and othering in contemporary Flemish cinema’. 2024, by Lennart Soberon & Gertjan Willems. New Review of Film & Television Studies 22(3): 737-759.
‘Revealing activist experiences through film-viewing: emotional geographies at the border of Ceuta and Melilla’. 2024, by Silvia Almenara-Niebla. Social & Cultural Geography.
‘Backroads into burried pasts: Irish border mobilities and narrative film’. 2024, by Lennart Soberon & Kevin Smets. Irish Studies Review, 32(4): 481-503.
‘Navigating the troubles’ tidelands: the push and pull of memory in post-conflict northern Ireland’s film and television industry’. 2025, by Lennart Soberon. Cultural Studies.
‘Hybrid aesthetics of standby’. Forthcoming, by Giacomo Toffano & Kevin Smets. Third Text.

Book chapters

‘Refugees and mediated lives’. 2022, by Kevin Smets, Giacomo Toffano & Silvia Almenara-Niebla. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (edited by Matthew Powers), Oxford University Press.
‘Physical, affective and symbolic immobility in the videos made by Sub-Saharan migrants at the EU external borders in Northern Africa’. 2022, by Miguel Fernández Labayen & Irene Gutiérrez Torres. In Border crossings and mobilities on screen (edited by Ruxandra Trandafoiu), Routledge.
‘Beating the Border: Playing with Migrant Experiences and Borderveillant Spectatorship in Channel 4's Smuggled (2019)’. 2023, by Lennart Soberon & Kevin Smets. In Creating Europe from the margins (edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir, Brigitte Hipfl, Sandra Ponzanesi), Routledge.
‘Archival participatory filmmaking in migration and border studies’. 2024, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. In Doing digital migration studies (edited by Koen Leurs & Sandra Ponzanesi), Amsterdam University Press.
‘Visual methods for migration research: approaches, strategies, and challenges’. 2024, by Kevin Smets. In Handbook of migration research methods (2nd edition) (edited by William L. Allen & Carlos Vargas-Silva), Edward Elgar Publishing.
‘Participatory filmmaking and migration’. 2025, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. In The Elgar Encyclopedia of Global Migration: New Mobilities and Artivism (edited by Laura Oso, Natalia Ribas-Mateos and Melissa Moralli). Edward Elgar Publishing.
‘Refugees and migrants’. Forthcoming, by Giacomo Toffano & Kevin Smets. In Encyclopedia of Visual Culture: Practices, Sites & Controversies (edited by Martin Hand & Barry Sandywell). Bloomsbury.

Reviews

‘Book review: Nikielska-Sekula, K. and Desille, A. Visual methodology in migration studies: Possibilities, theoretical implications, and questions’. 2022, by Silvia Almenara-Niebla. International Migration 60(3): 238-240.
‘Reddeloos in een zee van beelden: Io Capitano’. 2024, by Lennart Soberon. Fantômas.

Other Publications

‘On participatory filmmaking in Borderlands (I)’. 2022 April 8, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. IMISCOE PhD Blog.
‘On using participatory filmmaking in research’. 2023 May 28, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. IMISCOE PhD Blog.
‘On participatory filmmaking in borderlands (II)’. 2024 February 27, by Irene Gutiérrez Torres. IMISCOE PhD Blog.
‘How participatory filmmaking can deepen our understanding of life on the border’. 2025 February 6, by Kevin Smets. Media@LSE Blog.

Reel Borders studies how borders are imagined through film