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Katharina Niemeyer is a media theorist, professor at the School of Media (Faculty of Communication) at the Université du Québec à Montréal, director of CELAT-UQAM (Centre de recherche Cultures-Arts-Sociétés), co-responsible of the research-creation mXlab,  and co-founder of the indisciplinary art group Rabbitresearch. Trained in cultural sciences, media archaeology and media philosophy at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Germany), as well as in communication sciences at the University of Lyon (France) and at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), her research focuses on the relationships between media and (digital) technologies, temporalities, memory, and history; with a special focus on nostalgia and the theorization of nostalgia. She recently co-edited the book Nostalgies contemporaines : médias, cultures et technologies, published in 2021 by Presses universitaires du Septentrion, and she is also editor of the volume Media and Nostalgia. Yearning for the past, present, and future (Palgrave, 2014). Since 2022, she contributes to the research-creation project Solastalgies Créatrices on the Magdalen Islands, another approach to eco-anxiety. 

Katharina Niemeyer has also published books and articles on the mediatization and the narratives of major historical events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, 911, the Paris attacks of 2015 as well as the nuclear disaster in Fukushima by exploring media archives via a quantitative (statistical analysis) and a qualitative level approach (semiotics, content analysis, interviews). She has translated texts written by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, interviewed him and worked frequently with Marine Baudrillard during the last years within the Cool Memories association. From 2019-2023 Katharina Niemeyer was the principal investigator of the SSHRC-funded project TOTAL SCREEN, an exhibition and international symposium she co-organized with colleagues at the Design Center at UQAM.

She is a member of the editorial board of the journals MAST (Media Art Study and Theory) and Memory, Mind & Media (Cambridge University Press). Katharina Niemeyer is also council member of the International Association for Media and History and co-founder of the International Media and Nostalgia Network.

Twitter: @kathniemeyer   @media_debris

Research interests

  • media and communication theory
  • media, historical narratives and archives/ time and (media) temporalities
  • digital and analogue nostalgia
  • solastalgia
  • memory, history and nostalgia studies
  • media philosophy and archaeology
  • online communities and their relation to memory and nostalgia
  • mediatization and media events/ media, violence and terrorism
  • visual studies / semiotics

Previous academic positions and experiences

    • 2012-2017 Associate Professor at University Paris 2, Sorbonne Universities, The French Press Institute
    • April 2018 Invited professor at Université Catholique de Louvain
    • autumn 2016 Invited researcher at Media@McGill, McGill University, Canada

Affiliations (selection)