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Dr. Emiel Martens (1980) is a media lecturer, researcher, consultant, and producer. Emiel graduated cum laude in both Media Studies and Human Geography at the University of Amsterdam, was a visiting scholar at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at University of the West Indies, Mona, and holds a Ph.D in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation, entitled ‘Welcome to Paradise Island: The Rise of Jamaica’s Cine-Tourist Image, 1891-1951’, marked the first study of Jamaica’s early film history and its connections with the island's early tourism history.
After a postdoctoral position at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Dutch: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, abbreviated: KITLV), Emiel joined the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam in 2015 as a Senior Lecturer. Not much later, in 2016, he also joined the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) to become a team member of the research project 'Worlds of Imagination' (ERC Consolidator Grant), a comparative study of film tourism in non-western societies. His research interests span the fields of Postcolonial (Media) Studies, Media Geography, Popular Geopolitics, Creative Industries, Film (and) Tourism and Alternative Media, with a particular focus on the history, theory and praxis of the (Anglophone) Caribbean film and visual culture.
Besides his posts at the University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Emiel is also the founding director of Caribbean Creativity, a non-profit organization committed to the promotion of Caribbean and Caribbean-themed cinema, board member of NALACS, the Netherlands Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, communication advisor at IDleaks, a non-profit organization aimed at better communication about international development, film section editor at Bassculture Islands, an island lifestyle and creativity magazine, and co-owner of Dudes in your Face (Dutch: Gasten in je Gezicht), a media agency specializing in web and graphic design, social media, photography, film production and event organization, particularly in the social and cultural fields.