Dr Chiara Minestrelli is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media at London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) and Course Leader for BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Cultures.
She holds a PhD in Indigenous Studies from Monash University, where she conducted collaborative research on Australian Indigenous Hip Hop, identity, culture, spirituality and the role of the media in identity formation. Her book, Australian Indigenous Hip Hop: The Politics of Culture, Identity, and Spirituality (Routledge), is an ethnographic study that investigates the discursive and performative strategies employed by Australian Indigenous artists to make sense of the world and establish a position of authority over their identity and place in society.
In 2015-2016, Chiara was a Visiting Professor in the Africana Studies and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Programs at Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA, US), where she taught units on the Refugee Crisis, Popular Music, Globalisation and Cultural Studies. During that time, she also organised a seminar series on Ethnographic practices, as well as a mini-conference called Dream Warriors: Creating Pathways through Poetry and Music (Humanities Centre Grant). This event saw the participation of Native American artists who performed and gave lectures on identity and history in North America.
Chiara is passionate about social justice, and her research interests range from Indigenous and cultural studies, decolonisation, identity and representation, popular culture, media industries, digital technologies (primarily VR), digital heritage, museum studies and multimodality.
Chiara is currently working on a collaborative project that uses Virtual Reality to address questions about cross-cultural communication, community wellbeing, repatriation and visibility. At the same time, she is also collaborating on two projects about Indigenous presence in Europe through the creation of a mobile phone application and a VR experience.
View the BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Cultures course page.