Willemien Sanders is an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
She obtained a Master in Film and Television Studies at Utrecht University and combined working for the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam with extensive travels around the globe. She worked for various cultural organizations before embarking on her PhD project, which she completed in 2012.
Willemien’s PhD project was on documentary filmmaking and ethics. In her thesis, Participatory spaces. Negotiating cooperation and conflict in documentary project, she argues that while participants and filmmakers are co-creators committed to the project, conflict functions to safeguard their respective interests.
Willemien was subsequently involved in two research projects: EUscreenXL, which further developed the portal http://www.euscreen.eu, which makes archive material from European public broadcasters available to surf, search, and create with; and SiFTI, which investigated production cultures in successful private film and television production companies in Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Willemien furthermore has extensive experience as a media and culture studies lecturer.
Currently she is working on a number of smaller projects related to documentary, interactive documentary, production, and digitized archives.
Willemien was an advisor to the Dutch Cultural Media Fund and is co-chair of the Media Production Analysis Working Group of IAMCR.