Clelia is a lecturer in Postcolonial Media and Culture at the School of Computing and Digital Media.
Dr Clelia Clini is a Lecturer in Postcolonial Media and Culture at London Metropolitan University.
Before joining London Met, Clelia worked at Loughborough University London (2017-2023), where she was a Research Associate on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project “Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination (MMPI): British Asian Memory, Identity and Community after Partition”, a research project investigating cultural memories of the 1947 Partition of British India and wider processes of decolonisation, that circulate within South Asian diasporic communities in the UK. Previously, she was a ESRC GCRF Postdoctoral Research Associate on the project “Forced Displacement and Cultural Interventions” at University College London.
Before moving to the UK, Clelia was a Lecturer in Media and Communications at John Cabot University, Rome (2012 -2016) and she also taught modules in Media and Gender, European Mass Media and Intercultural Communication at The American University of Rome (2013-2016). She has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Roma Tre (postgraduate programme in Museum Studies) and at the International South Asian Studies Summer School, Vilnius University.
Clelia received her PhD in Postcolonial and Cultural Studies at the University of Naples L’Orientale (2011). She has an integrated master’s degree in Intercultural Studies (2005, University of Trieste) and a master’s degree in Migration Studies (2007, University of Venice Cà Foscari). Her master’s dissertation on Indian popular cinema was awarded the Filippo Sacchi Award for the best MA dissertations in Film Studies -awarded by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.
Clelia teaches modules in the media and communications area.
Clelia is a cultural ethnographer, specialising in the study of cultural heritage, transnational networks and questions of identity and belonging in the South Asian diaspora. She has strong experience in participatory arts research methods, and participatory action research.
Her research cuts across disciplines as she works across migration and diaspora studies; postcolonial theory; memory and cultural heritage; film and media studies. She has published articles and book chapters on Indian popular cinema and the Indian cultural and creative industries; South Asian diasporic literature and cinema; lived experiences of migration and the transmission of cultural heritage and memories across time and space. She has done extensive research on the cultural memories of the 1947 Partition of British India within South Asian diasporic communities in the UK (as part of the MMPI project, Loughborough University), as well as on the legacy of colonial and postcolonial discourses on films and media narratives on migration. She has also researched the impact of cultural and creative activities on the wellbeing of forcibly displaced people.
Clelia has co-edited special issues of academic journals such as South Asian Diaspora , Transnational Screens, Genre sexualité & société and, most recently, a special issue of Cultural Trends on “Indian Cultural and Creative Industries". She has also co-edited the volume South and East Asian Cinemas Across Borders: Critical Trends in Transnational Cinema (Routledge, 2021).
Edited collections and special issues:
Dasgupta, Rohit and Clini Clelia, (eds.) “Indian Cultural and Creative Industries”, special issue of Cultural Trends, 2023.
Clini, Clelia, Dasgupta, Rohit, and Yang, Yangling, (eds.) South and East Asian Cinemas Across Borders. Critical Trends in Transnational Cinema. New Delhi: Routledge 2021.
Clini, Clelia and Valanciunas, Deimantas (eds.), “South Asian Diasporas and (Imaginary) Homelands: Transnationalism and Representations in the 21st Century”, special issue of South Asian Diaspora Vol. 13:1, 2021.
Yang, Yangling, Clini, Clelia and Dasgupta, Rohit (eds.), “Critical Trends in Transnational Cinema: Inter-Asian Productions and Exchanges”, special issue of Transnational Screens, Vol. 11:3, 2020.
Villani, M., Kiani, S., Ding, E., Clini, C. and Trbonja, N. (eds.), special issue of Genre, Sexualité & Société, Hors-série “Visuels”, n 3, 2018.
Selected articles & book chapters:
Clini, Clelia and Valanciunas, Deimantas, “Bollywood and slum tours: poverty tourism and the Indian cultural industry”, Cultural Trends 32:4, 2023.
Clini, Clelia, Hornabrook, Jasmine and Keightley, Emily, “Partition at 75: reflections on migrant memories in the British South Asian diaspora”, South Asian Diaspora, 2023.
Clini, Clelia, Hornabrook, Jasmine and Keightley, Emily, “Televising the Partition of British India: Memory, Identity and the Privatization of the Past in 70th Anniversary Commemorative Broadcasting”, Media History 28:4, 2022.
Keightley, Emily and Clini, Clelia, “Personal photography, vernacular memory and the management of the postcolonial experience”, German Handbook of Memory Studies, 2022.
Clini, Clelia. “Poverty, (neo)orientalism and the cinematic re-presentation of Dark India”, in M. Gymnich, B. Schmidt-Haberkamp, K. Schneider, eds., Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World, Brill, 2021.
Hornabrook, Jasmine, Clini, Clelia, Keightley, Emily, “Creative memory: memory, methodology and the postcolonial imagination”, in E. Bell, E. and S. Singh-Sengupta, (eds.) Empowering Methods in Organizational and Social Research, Routledge, 2021.
Clini, Clelia, Hornabrook, Jasmine and Keightley, Emily, “Migration, Arts and the negotiation of belonging: an analysis of creative practices within British Asian communities in London and Loughborough”, in AmeriQuest 16(1): 2021.
Clini, Clelia and Valanciunas, Deimantas, “Editorial: South Asian Diasporas and (Imaginary) Homelands: Why Representations Still Matter”, South Asian Diaspora, 13:1, 2021.
Clini, Clelia, “Diasporic visions: colonialism, nostalgia and the empire in Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House”, South Asian Diaspora, 13:1, 2021.
Clini, Clelia, “Is Everybody Kung Fu Fighting? Indian Popular Cinema and Martial Arts Films”, Transnational Screens, 11:3, 2020.
Clini, Clelia, “(Post)colonial friendships and Empire 2.0: A Brexit reading of Victoria & Abdul”, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 56:5, 2020.
Yanling Yang , Clelia Clini & Rohit K. Dasgupta, “Critical trends in transnational cinema: Inter-Asian productions and exchanges”, Transnational Screens, 11:3, 2020.
Helen J Chatterjee, Clelia Clini, Beverly Butler, Fatima Al-Nammari and Cornelius Katona, “Exploring the psychosocial impact of cultural interventions with forcibly displaced people”, in Elena Fiddiam-Qasmiyeh, ed., Refuge in a Moving World. Tracing Refugees and Migrant Journeys Across Europe, UCL Press, 2020.
Clini, Clelia, Thomson, Linda. and Chatterjee, Helen J., “Assessing the impact of artistic and cultural activities on the health and wellbeing of forcibly displaced people using participatory action research”, BMJ Open 2019.
Clini, Clelia, “Diasporic dreams and shattered desires: displacement, identity and tradition in Deepa Mehta’s Heaven on Earth”, in L. Bayman and N. Pinazza, eds., Journeys On Screen: Theory, ethics and aesthetics. EUP 2018.
Clelia is a Visiting Fellow in Postcolonial Memory in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University.