Jamie Steele

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: English
Department: English

His area of study is interdisciplinary, blending together French language studies, and ‘La Francophonie’ with Film Studies. The PhD research focuses upon the national film production of Belgium, exploring the transnational connections forged between the nations and states in Europe, predicated upon linguistic allegiance. The thesis serves as a means of re-conceptualizing the Francophone aegis (normally reserved for films from the former French colonies) in order to include and read Belgian cinema through this prism. The research is not restricted to a focus upon film policy and macro- and micro- economic considerations of the perceived imbalanced relationship between Belgium and France, but is also extended to a textual approach and consideration of how cultural film policy is imagined and then imaged on screen. Particular emphasis is thus placed upon the Francophone Belgian filmmakers such as the Dardenne Brothers and Bouli Lanners, whose corpus of work also exist as a rich source for further areas of research, such as the impact of migration and the situation of diasporas within Belgium (predicated upon both the French colonial experience and Belgian colonial expansion).