Authors in conversation: Minority Languages and Documentary Media
Documentary media can play an important role in making minority and minoritised languages visible. At the same time, documentaries do much more than simply record languages and communities; they shape how linguistic identities, histories, and cultures are represented and understood. In this webinar, which is part of the Online Talks series, we took a closer look at the recent special issue Minority Languages and Documentary Media: Representation, Translation and Power, edited by Dafydd Sills-Jones and Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones and published in the Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe.
We will ask how documentary can give visibility to languages and communities, how translation and mediation influence their representation, and how film can contribute to preserving and reimagining linguistic and cultural memory. Drawing on cases from Galician, Zhuji, Kurdish, Upper Silesian, and Scottish Gaelic contexts, we explored how documentary can become a space where questions of identity, legitimacy, cultural continuity, and political power are negotiated, while also shaping the way minority languages are understood, represented, and valued.
31st of August 2026
Hosted by Andreea Cârstocea
Panel
Sergiusz Bober has been a Senior Researcher at the ECMI and head of the Politics & Civil Society cluster since September 2017.
His primary research focus is minority language media (MLM). Within this field, he has conducted pioneering research on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on MLM outlets and analysed the impact of digitalisation on minority language newspapers in the Basque Country, Denmark, Galicia, and Germany. He also co-edited the volume Minority Language Media. Current Challenges in a Fragmented Mediascape (Spinger Nature/Palgrave, 2025), which showcases recent scholarship on MLM embedded in diverse linguistic situations.
Sergiusz’s MLM-related efforts have been instrumental in securing highly competitive international funding for the ECMI. He is currently a Publications Manager for the EU-funded PLURILINGMEDIA COST Action (CA23105, funding period 2024-2028), which aims to consolidate a Europe-wide community of scholars in the MLM field. A DFG-funded conference grant obtained in 2023, on the other hand, enabled the Cluster to enhance cooperation between international scholars interested in MLM, while specifically highlighting Italian and German minority contexts.
His broader academic interests include two emerging topics: minorities in the context of sport and linguistic landscapes. Regarding the former field, he explores sport (and football in particular) as a platform for increasing the visibility of minority languages and identities. In the latter, his intention is to examine secondary and peripheral locations, such as small towns.
Sergiusz is active in several professional networks, including the International Association for Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR), the European Language Equality Network (ELEN), and the NordMedia Network.
Furthermore, he has been responsible and co-responsible for ECMI publications, such as the ECMI Research Papers (until April 2021) and the ECMI Minorities Blog (since September 2021). Between September 2019 and February 2020, he served as the Centre’s interim co-director.
Chen Chen is a filmmaker, practice-led researcher, and educator whose work explores the intersections of cinematic space, embodied experience, film poetry, and contemporary screen technologies. Her practice spans narrative and documentary filmmaking, virtual production, moving-image installation, and curatorial practice, with a particular interest in how cinematic forms shape and reimagine experiences of everyday life.
Before moving to New Zealand, Chen worked in China’s television industry while developing independent film and curatorial projects. These experiences continue to inform her creative practice and research, particularly her investigations into performance, spectatorship, cinematic space, and evolving modes of screen production. More information about Chen.
Dr. Özgür Çiçek is a film scholar, researcher, and lecturer in the Department of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests include national and transnational cinemas, minor cinemas with a particular emphasis on Kurdish cinema, documentary film studies, memory and archive studies, and film aesthetics. Last year, she co-edited Audiovisual Healing and Reparation: Recuperative Affect of Mediation. Her forthcoming monograph, contracted with Edinburgh University Press, is titled Kurdish Cinema in Turkey: Indigeneity, Imprisonment, and the Archive. More information about her research and publications can be found at www.ozgurcicek.de
Alastair is a Senior Lecturer in Film Practice at the University of Newcastle. He is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and practice-based researcher. His films have been released in cinemas internationally, screened at over 200 international film festivals — including twice at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival — and received multiple international awards in both the film industry and academia. They have also been broadcast on the BBC and internationally in more than 40 languages. More information about Alastair here.
Professor Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones is Director of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at University of Wales Trinity Saint David where Literature Across Frontiers is based. She is is an internationally recognised academic specialising in minority languages, sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, cultural policy, media and literary translation. For over twenty years she has led international research projects and directed the work of Mercator. In 2017, she was appointed to the Council of Europe’s Expert Group of the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages and is Vice-President of ELEN (European Language Equality Network) since 2019. She was Professor at Aberystwyth University where she was also Director of Welsh Language and Culture with responsibility for six academic departments, including the Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies until 2018. More information about Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones here.
María Seijo-Richart obtained her PhD in English Philology (specialty in Film Adaptation) from the Universidade da Coruña in 2014. She also holds a Master's degree in World Cinema from the University of Leeds, where she now works at the Institute for Transport Studies. She teaches design and production of academic video essays, incorporating accessibility principles, and researches the role of cinema in shaping mobility and communication. Her research interests are transnational audiovisual adaptations and cinema in minority languages. She focuses on the Galician audiovisual sector and the impact of technology in the circulation of narratives.
Dafydd is Associate Head of School (International and External) and Head of the AVG (Animation, Visual Effects and Game Design) department, at AUT's Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa // The School of Art and Design.
Before that he was deputy head and then acting head for the School of Communications at AUT, and before that the Director of Postgraduate Studies at the Institute of Literature, Languages and the Creative Arts at Aberystwyth University.
He is director of the AUT Virtual Creative Design Research Centre (VCDRC), and is co-editor of the Peter Lang book series Documentary Film Cultures and the open access e-journal International Journal of Creative Media Research. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Media History, and the Journal of Media Practice and Education (both Taylor & Francis). He is a member of the The International Association for Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR).
He is a media maker and scholar with a background in documentary and digital media production. His work is rooted in the practice of filmmaking as a creative and critical process, exploring the intersections of art, design, and technology (for more see NGĀ HUA and RANGAHAU tabs above). More information about Dafydd here.
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