dr. Marek Jancovic

I am Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. My current research is centered around the materialities of the moving image, film preservation practices, sustainable media and format studies. Together with Axel Volmar and Alexandra Schneider, I am the co-editor of Format Matters: Standards, Practices, and Politics in Media Cultures.

In collaboration with Jimi Jones (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), my latest book project investigates the standardization of digital video formats across film heritage institutions in West Africa, Europe and North America, focusing especially on the social and political factors affecting the adoption of particular formats.

I obtained my PhD from the University of Mainz, Germany. My doctoral project Misinscriptions: A Media Epigraphy of Video Compression was an interdisciplinary archaeology of video compression techniques exploring the historical interrelationships between mathematics, medicine and media.

My wider research interests include the politics of infrastructure, electricity and the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the interstices between queer studies, disability studies and STS. I have published on topics including the history of film frame rates, the preservation of web video formats, animal spectatorship and animal media practice, paper folding, or the mediality of Covid-19. And I spend an unreasonable amount of my free time thinking about historical phenomenology. 

I am a member of SCMS, necs, RMeS, GfM, SMPTE and the Europeana Network Association. I was a guest researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (2018-2019) and associate member of the German Research Foundation training group Configurations of Film (2017-2020).

As a fiction and documentary film producer, I have produced several award-winning films, dealing primarily with community, freedom, and systems of oppression and resistance. Among others, the documentaries Mama Agatha, I'm Not Afraid and 26 de Diciembre have been shown at hundreds of festivals worldwide. My own audiovisual works have been exhibited by art institutions such as the Finnish Museum of Photography, the Fotomuseum Wintherthur in Switzerland, Frascati Theater in the Netherlands, and others.

I teach in the MA program Arts & Culture: Comparative Arts and Media Studies and the BA program in Media, Arts, Design and Architecture. I have experience teaching a wide range of both introductory and advanced graduate classes in media studies, media archaeology, film studies, cultural analysis, film production practice, and dramaturgy. Some of the recent ones include:

• Transmedia Storytelling (MA)
• Approaching Visual and Material Culture (BA)
• Media Research Group: "Formats" (BA)
• Research Methods in Media, Arts, Design and Architecture (BA)
• Academic Skills (BA)

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