Mr Luis Freijo

Personal Statement

I specialise in World Cinema theory, film genre theory and the global Western, as they apply to film aesthetics and politics.

I have recently joined Languages, Cultures and Film after completing my PhD thesis at the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham, where the Viva is due to take place in the next months. Before that, I completed a MA by Research at the University of Birmingham.

My current research, following my PhD thesis, is dedicated to recalibrating film genre theory to make it relevant to the field of World Cinema studies, and not just to Hollywood films. I utilise the Western as the genre of context for my research, under the premise that if the Western can be de-Westernised, then any genre can. I have published my research in the volumes 'Sense8: Transcending Television', 'The Routledge Companion to European Cinema' and 'Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash', and I have co-authored a new theorisation of genre theory and World Cinema along with Rob Stone published in Transnational Screens in the article 'World Cinema between the rock of the unknowable and the hard place of the as yet unknown'. I have also published widely in Spanish on Hollywood filmmakers and stars.

Finally, I have professional experience in the media industry in Spain. I studied Journalism and Audiovisual Communication at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, and I have worked in online press, radio and, especially, television, as a writer and reporter in Telecinco, the most viewed national network of the country.

Funded Fellowships