Christian Olesen

Dr. Christian Olesen is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture. He holds a PhD degree in Media Studies (cum laude/with distinction) from the University of Amsterdam, an MA degree (cum laude/with distinction) in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image from the University of Amsterdam, and has, prior to this, studied film history and theory at the universities of Copenhagen and Bologna.

Currently his research focusses on developing digital teaching and training strategies for Dutch media studies curricula, focussing on the tools and collections offered by the CLARIAH Media Suite. Prior to this, he was Postdoctoral Researcher in the project The Sensory Moving Image Archive: Boosting Creative Reuse for Artistic Practice and Research (2017-2019) led by Professor of Film Heritage and Digital Film Culture and Chief Curator at EYE Filmmuseum Giovanna Fossati. He was also Principal Investigator of the NWO CLARIAH project MIMEHIST: Annotating EYE’s Jean Desmet Collection (2017-2018). The project aimed at embedding the Jean Desmet Collection of the EYE Filmmuseum in the Dutch digital national research infrastructure CLARIAH’s Media Suite. In addition, the project developed annotation functionalities for the CLARIAH Media Suite which allow researchers to establish links between films and film-related materials in the Desmet Collection. In the academic year 2017/2018, he was invited as scholar-in-residence at the EYE Filmmuseum where he researched early compilation films and, in particular, the work of Nicole Vedrès preserved in Eye’s collections.

In addition to these research activities he has a longstanding interest in documentary and experimental cinema, sound theory and auditory culture and is, in his spare time, an avid field recordist, sampler enthusiast and collagist, listener of radio and various forms of experimental music.