Dr Chiara Minestrelli

Biography

Dr Chiara Minestrelli is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London) and Course Leader of the BA (HONS) Contemporary Media Cultures.

She holds a PhD in Indigenous Studies from Monash University where she conducted 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.

From 2015 to 2016 she 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 very passionate about social justice and her research interests range from Indigenous and cultural studies, decolonisation, identity and representation, popular culture, media industries and digital technologies (primarily VR), social semiotics, and multimodality. In 2019/20, Chiara led a series of workshops, Sonic Futures, that explored the connection between artistic practices, Critical Theory, Hip Hop music, the environment, and local communities in South London. The first year of the workshops culminated in the Sonic Futures conference (April 2019), which put together students and scholars from various backgrounds.

Chiara is currently undertaking research on Indigenous cultures in Europe while working on a collaborative project that uses Virtual Reality to address questions around cross-cultural communication, community wellbeing, repatriation and visibility.