Magdalena Zdrodowska is an anthropologist, film and media scholar working at the intersection of disability studies, deaf studies, and the history of technology. Her first book, Television on the borderlands [published in Polish, Krakow 2013], considers television as a tool for intercultural communication. Her second monograph, Telephone, cinema and cyborgs. The mutual relations between deafness and technology [published in Polish, Krakow 2021], focuses on technologies invented for deaf consumers, and on the ones hacked, repurposed and reclaimed by deaf innovators. In her most recent project, Deaf History of Cinema, funded by the Polish National Science Center, she rethinks film history and theory from the deaf perspective, and writes the history of Polish deaf amateur film movement. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Audiovisual Arts at Jagiellonian University.
Within the MEDEP consortium, Magdalena will explore the artistic and cultural practices that people with disabilities have been using to handle the health crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as narrate their experiences. She will also investigate the consequences that the widespread transition to online work, education, entertainment and activism caused by pandemic restrictions brought to people with disabilities in terms of social, cultural, and political participation and citizenship.
Media and Epidemics (MEDEP) 