Eszter Zimanyi is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Southern California in 2021. She specializes in global media cultures, migration and refugee studies, and documentary. Her work on topics such as refugee selfies, humanitarian immersive media, and migrant documentaries is published in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (JCMS), Feminist Media Studies, and Transnational Cinemas, among others.
Eszter is currently working on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled Unsettled Media: Documenting Refugees and Europe’s Shifting Borders along the Balkan Route. This book examines contemporary non-fiction media about Europe’s so-called “migrant crisis” to demonstrate how multiple migrant/refugee communities, government institutions, journalists, artists, and activists use media to unsettle post-Cold War Europe’s material and conceptual borders. It centers on the Balkan Route, one of the primary land routes for unauthorized migrants/refugees traveling toward Western Europe in recent years, and demonstrates how the Balkan Route mediates between the Cold War and War on Terror as migrants and refugees from the Global South (most of whom come from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan) move across the former “Second World.”
In addition to her scholarly work, Eszter is the former co-programmer of USC's Middle East Film Screening Series and served as a consultant for The Wende Museum's 2019 exhibit, "Watching Socialism: The Television Revolution in Eastern Europe." She most recently curated Discarded Visions, a virtual exhibit exploring the political, cultural, and mediating qualities of waste.