Chaired and Introduced Festival Screening of Don't Break Down: A Film about Jawbreaker in London
Nov 3, 2025
Location
Hackney Picture House, London
Description
I chaired and introduced a festival screening of Don't Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker, at the London Hackney Film House as part of the Doc N Roll Festival
CAMC research talk: 'Creativity in Motion - Unfinishing Feminist Film and Literary History'
Apr 30, 2025
Location
Merchiston Campus E17
Description
Guest speaker Dr Alix Beeston (Cardiff University) will be speaking about women’s unfinished creative labour in the late-twentieth-century United States and its afterlives in the present, focussing on the work of Kathleen Collins.
'Representation of South Asian Women in Scottish Cinema' Film Screenings and Discussions
Jun 8, 2024
Location
Summerhall, Edinburgh
Description
Free Film Screenings curated by Sana Bilgrami
South Asian communities appear on the periphery of Scottish cinema where films have predominantly explored narratives about white Scottish masculinity and female voices often struggle to be heard. South Asian women are virtually invisible except in a scattering of documentary and fiction films. How are South Asian female characters represented in Scottish films? This series of film screenings is intended to provoke discussions that might create space to challenge stereotyping and explore new possibilities of representation.
PROGRAMME
Saturday 8th June 2024
Red Lecture Theatre, Summerhall
BOOK your FREE tickets at www.summerhall.co.uk/sh-event/representation-of-south-asian-women-in-scottish-cinema
3:30pm - 5:45pm: 'Migration and Belonging': short films + discussion with filmmakers
Meet Me by the Water (Raisa Ahmed, 2016, 15 min)
Ethnoresidue (Jasleen Kaur, 2020, 20 min)
Across the Waters (Sana Bilgrami, 2004, 28 min)
Points of Departure (Alia Syed, 2014, 16 min)
Organised this training event for the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities at the Moving Image Archive of the National Library of Scotland
Gender and Sexuality Research at Edinburgh Napier University
Mar 6, 2024
Location
Merchiston Campus, room: MER_H11
Description
Let’s get together and listen to colleagues working on gender and sexuality! And then let’s talk about their fascinating ideas, and how they relate to our own work and topics! This event is envisaged as informal and friendly gathering, following the success of similar gathering in 2023. We want to continue on this good tradition, and build new connections, learn about inspiring research we are doing across the university, feel inspired and nurtured.
Please send any queries to: Dr Roberto Kulpa (r.kulpa@napier.ac.uk)
SCHEDULE
14:00-14:10
Welcome (Roberto Kulpa)
14:10-15:00 TRANS LIVES
GUEST: Gina Gwenffrewi (University of Edinburgh) will start with an input about trans* people's cultural production online (i.e. YouTube, Twitter/X), framing the moral panic, and its impact on the trans* communities.
Rob Clucas (Law) will speak to the latest ‘gender critical’ challenge to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 in the appeal to the Supreme Court in the For Women Scotland case. He suggests that a solution to the current poisonous polemic around trans* rights can usefully be sought in the dialogic theory of Martin Buber (Buber 1958).
Toni Kania (Social Sciences) will introduce their PhD project about conceptualising bodily autonomy and sovereignty of trans* people – and from trans* peoples’ perspective – in Poland.
15:00-15:10 Coffee and pastries break
15:10-16:00 GENDERED VIOLENCE
Amy Beddows (Counselling) will speak about the potential of horror texts as tools for survivors processing the experiences of gendered violence.
Anne Schwan (English) will reflect on femicide, perpetrator narratives and the challenge of restorative justice, drawing from her analysis of Em Strang's novel “Quinn” (2023).
Fiona McQueen (Social Sciences) will conclude this section pondering on her project on Scottish young men’s attitudes towards prevention messages on violence against women, incl. queer & trans men’s accounts and insights.
16:00-16:10 Coffee and pastries break
16:10-17:00 REPRESENTATIONS
Yen Nee Wong (Social Sciences) will introduce us to queer cultures of ballroom dancing and the role of Strictly Come Dancing’s representations and mainstreaming.
David Bishop (Creative Writing) will speak about his creative writing PhD, instigation into the scarcity of queer sleuths in historical mystery fiction set before the Victorian era, and the politics of outing and authorship.
Phiona Stanley (Tourism) will talk about labels – ‘spinsters’, ‘crazy cat ladies’, ‘witches’. It is also, in theoretical terms, about queering queerness by negotiating the queer and deeply gendered queerness of spinsterhood.
17:00-17:10 Coffee and pastries break
17:10-17:45 POP!
Ashley Stein (Music) will introduce their PhD project on how hyperpop and other electronic music practices can be used to destabilise gender binaries.
Frederik Byrn Køhlert (English, Visual Cultures) will close this input section with a reflection on the representation of gender and sexuality in comics & graphic novels, incl. examples from work as editor of a Routledge series on Gender, Sexuality, and Comics.
17:45-onwards: Post-Event Drinks & Food at nearby The Golf Tavern
30-31 Wright's Houses, Bruntsfield, EH10 4HR
Event Organisation:
Dr Roberto Kulpa
School of Applied Sciences: Deputy Research Degrees Lead
Co-Director: MSc Applied Social Research
Co-Investigator: (2022-2026) ‘RESIST. Fostering Queer Feminist Intersectional Resistances against Transnational Anti-Gender Politics’ (EU Horizon Europe grant no. 101060749).
Queering Participatory Archives & National Collections
May 26, 2023
Location
National Library of Scotland, George 4th Bridge, Edinburgh
Description
The Living Archives is a collaborative research project in which we explore connections between archives, identity and materiality. We challenge the hierarchy and centrality of institutional archives by inviting participants to recognise the value of personal archival artefacts through an exploratory, creative and discursive process.
In August 2022, experimental filmmaker, radical archist and curator, Lydia Beilby, and filmmaker/lecturer, Sana Bilgrami, worked with Alchemy festival. We held workshops in Hawick with a group of queer/non-binary young adults, using physical film and archival
objects to engage with concepts of identity and to challenge the dominance of digital culture and the hierarchy of public archives. The group shot a short black and white 16mm film on a Bolex camera. They used the language of experimental film to explore their personal archives and identities, and created their own archive on a film-strip.
In this workshop, we aim to deepen and widen our conversations on participatory archives and identity.
In collaboration with the National Library of Scotland (NLS), we will invite a wider group of ten new participants from LGBT Youth Scotland. At NLS premises, we will analogue-project the Alchemy group's 16mm film alongside a curated selection of short films, followed by a roundtable workshop on archives and identity. The Alchemy young filmmakers will reflect on claiming space to express their identity and on physical archive-making as a creative process. All participants will explore inclusive possibilities of breaking barriers between conventional and counter archives, and creating a sense of belonging, through a sharing of personal archival objects whilst exploring relevant books and ephemera from the Library's archives.
Royal Television Society Scotland Event 'The View from the Terrace - Turning Around topical television
Apr 27, 2023
Location
Merchiston Campus
Description
A free talk by the production team behind the BBC Scotland programme 'A View from the Terrace' organised by the Royal Television Society Scotland, open to students and the public.
The Living Archives is a collaborative research project in which we explore connections between archives, identity and materiality. We challenge the hierarchy and centrality of institutional archives by inviting participants to recognise the value of personal archival artefacts through an exploratory, creative and discursive process.
In August 2022, experimental filmmaker, radical archist and curator, Lydia Beilby, and filmmaker/lecturer, Sana Bilgrami, worked with Alchemy festival. We held workshops in Hawick with a group of queer/non-binary young adults, using physical film and archival objects to engage with concepts of identity and to challenge the dominance of digital culture and the hierarchy of public archives. The group shot a short black and white 16mm film, 'Letter to Time', on a Bolex camera. They used the language of experimental film to explore their personal archives and identities, and created their own archive on a film-strip.
Co-organiser of International Conference 'Orange is the New Black and New Perspectives on the Women in Prison Genre'
Jun 5, 2015
Location
Merchiston Campus
Description
One-day interdisciplinary, international conference on Netflix original series 'Orange is the New Black' in the wider context of the women in prison genre, with keynote speaker Professor Diane Negra (University College Dublin).
