Ilona Hongisto

Biography

Before joining Macquarie in February 2016, Ilona was an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Media Studies, University of Turku (FIN). In the past, she has held research positions at UC Berkeley (USA) and Concordia University (CAN). Currently, Ilona is also affiliated with the University of Melbourne as an Honorary Fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts. Ilona is a member of three international research groups: the SSHRC funded research-creation network Immediations led by Professor Erin Manning (SenseLab/ Concordia University), the EU funded COST Action on New Materialism led by Associate Professor Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University) and the research cluster on the ethics of storytelling in contemporary arts led by Professor Hanna Meretoja (University of Turku).

Research Interest

lona works across the fields of screen and cultural studies, media theory and political philosophy. She specializes in documentary media, and particularly in questions concerning ethics and aesthetics, geopolitics and the cultural industries that condition documentary filmmaking. In particular, Ilona explores the ways in which documentary cinema does not only represent what already exists, but creatively adds to the composition of the real. Her work on the aesthetics of the frame as well as imagination, fabulation and affection has opened up new avenues for considering the crossovers between fact and fiction, creativity in non-fiction storytelling and the ethics of sustainability in documentary media. Presently, Ilona is writing a book on documentary film festivals and post-Soviet Eastern European documentary cinema. The book focuses on the socio-political transition period of the 1990s and 2000s through the aesthetics of the frame mobilized in Eastern European documentary films that travel the international festival circuit.