Welcome to my page,

I am currently working as Teaching Fellow at the Department of Film Studies of King's College London. Follow this link to redirect to my current institutional webpage: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/filmstudies/people/acad/girina/index.aspx

I recently completed a PhD program in Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, for which I developed a project on cinema and video games. Reflecting the diverse nature of my education background, during this time I took part also to other research projects, focusing on issues such as film education, regional cinema and Japanese popular culture. At Warwick I developed my teaching skills, working as Teaching Assistant and undertaking formal training that led me to become Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Education, teaching and research interests

I am an audiovisual media researcher specialised on video games and cinema. In 2006, I was awarded a BA in Languages and Communication and in 2009 I completed an MA in Languages and Codes for Journalism and New Media. During these years, I studied subjects from a wide range of fields: Linguistics, Psychology, Advertisement, Media and Communication, Japanese/English/Spanish Languages and Literatures. After my graduation, I worked at the Department of Media and Communication (Scienze della Comunicazione) of the University of Cagliari for two years, acting as tutor for the module of ‘Introduciton to Film and Media Theory’, as well as supervising a variety of workshops in film produciton (filmmaking, screenwriting, directing, editing). In 2011–2012, I worked as Reserach Fellow for the PRIN project “Renovation processes in the ‘professions’ of cinema. The culture of film education” (I processi di rinnovamento dei ‘quadri’ nel cinema italiano. La formazione della cultura cinematografica), funded by the Italian Minster of University and Research, which led to the development of an online database mapping the institutes providing film education in Italy and abroad (www.cinemaformazione.it). I worked as Teaching Assistant for the modules ’Italian Cinema from Fascism to Neorealism‘ led by Prof. Stephen Gundle (2013) and ‘World Cinema, Transnational Film and Globalisation’ led by Dr. Karl Schoonover (2015). Among others, my research interests are: video game aesthetics and culture; Japanese popular culture and horror cinema; film education and media literacy; regional representation and Sardinian cinema. In 2014 I was awarded the PGA (Post Graduate Award) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education certificate becomgin Associate Fellow of the British Higher Education Academy. The certificaiton involved one year of theoretical and practical work on updated pedagogic strategies such as: constructivist alignment models of teaching; the definition of ILOs (Intended Learning Outcomes); teaching inclusively; formative and constructive feedback. As a result of my commitment to high quality teaching, in 2013 I received a WATEPGR (Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence for Postgraduate Research students) nomination.

I am co-founder and member of the Editorial Board of the international academic journal G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media and Entertainment. www.gamejournal.it

PhD research project

Cinematic Games: the aesthetic remediation of cinema in video games

On the 10th of June 2015, I was awarded a PhD in Film and Television Studies with a thesis titled ‘Cinematic Games: the aesthetic influence of cinema in video games’ supervised by Dr. Jon Burrows, and defended with Prof. Mark J. P. Wolf as external examiner. The thesis focuses on the formal and aesthetic influence of cinema on video games during the 7th console generation. My research aims to identify the formal instances that in video games remediate the aesthetic of cinema. The early stage of development in Game Studies and its controversial relationship with adjacent fields impose an extensive reflection on the state of the art in this subject. Throughout the wide corpus of video games analysed in my work (all from the 7th console generation), the examples of cinematic techniques generate a specific sub-corpus that comes together as a meta-genre: cinematic games. Video game genres are determined not only by iconographic and thematic elements, but mostly according to their ludic structure. Here, the aesthetic of cinema and the ludic nature of games come together as the cinematic character of these texts determines the way in which they are played, creating constraints and ultimately suggesting a specific ludic style. Finally, the title of the thesis addresses the vague defintion of 'cinematic game' as widely spread concept in cultural discourses. Not only is this concept adopted by the gamers’ community but it is also used by the specialised press and in scholarly works to identify the cinematographic qualities of a video games often in diverse and unclear ways, creating inconsistent definitions.

Conference papers

– University of Bergen, 28 October 2014, Lingue, Linguaggi e Cinema in Italia, Ivan Girina: ‘Il Linguaggio del Nuovo Cinema Sardo: ipotesi per un'estetica del locale tra stili e paradigmi di produzione’.

– Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul), ICIDS 2013 (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling), Ivan Girina: ‘Video Game Mise-en-scene: Remediation of cinematic codes in video games’.

– University of Warwick, 12th July 2013, Digital / Moving Image and Networked Performance. On Cultural Tranformations, Ivan Girina: ‘Video Game Mise-en-scene: Remediation of cinematic codes in video games’.

– Univeristy of Roma Tre, Videoludica e nuove forme della visione (Videoludic and new forms of vision), 23rd May 2013, Ivan Girina: ‘REMEDIATION Influence between Film and Video Game Language’.

– University of Warwick, Regionalism and Representation, 26th April 2013, Ivan Girina and Antioco Floris: ‘The Sardinian Case: Issue in the cultural representation of an Island’.

– Udine/Gorizia, FilmForum 2013, Ivan Girina: ‘Desire and Fear of Transformation in Japanese Contemporary Popular Culture: the postmodern aesthetics of transfiguration from Resident Evil to Devil May Cry’.

– Udine/Gorizia, FilmForum 2012, Ivan Girina: ‘Desire and Fear of Transformation in Japanese Contemporary Culture’.

Publications

− Ivan Girina, ‘Video Game Mise-en-scene: Remediation of cinematic codes in video games’, in Hartmut Koenitz, Tonguc Ibrahim Sezen, Gabriele Ferri, Mads Haahr, Digdem Sezen, Güven C̨atak (ed.), Interactive Storytelling. 6th International Conference, Proceedings of “ICIDS 2013” Istanbul, Turkey, November 6-9, 2013, Springer, 2014.

− Ivan Girina, ‘Dark Water di Hideo Nakata’ (Hideo Nakata's Dark Water), in Quaderni della Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere dell'Università degli Studi di Cagliari, vol. 14, Aracne Editrice, May 2013.

− Antioco Floris and Ivan Girina, ‘La Nuova Stagione del Cinema in Sardegna’ (The New Season of Sardinian Cinema), in A Scuola di Cinema. La Formazione nelle Professioni dell’Audiovisivo, Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2013.

− Ivan Girina, ‘Il Montaggio nella Formazione Cinematografica’ (Editing in Film Education), in A Scuola di Cinema. La Formazione nelle Professioni dell’Audiovisivo, Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2013.

− Ivan Girina, ‘Film VS Game – Resident Evil’ & ‘Film VS Game – Tomb Raider’, in Segno Cinema, v.176, Jul–Aug 2012.

– Ivan Girina, ‘Il Fantastico in Solaris Andrej Tarkovskij’ (The Fantasy Element in Andrej Tarkovskij's Solaris), in Quaderni della Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere dell'Università degli Studi di Cagliari, vol. 12, Aracne Editrice, August 2010.

Ivan Girina

I dot Girina at warwick dot ac dot uk

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