Team Members

Dr. Jakob Boer (Postdoc)

Dr. Jakob Boer is currently a post‑doctoral researcher in Film Studies at the University of Groningen’s Faculty of Arts. He has multidisciplinary training in film and media studies, phenomenology, and philosophy, and specialises in quantitative methods for studying lived experiences. 

He recently completed a PhD thesis titled Sensing Slowness: A Phenomenology of Slow Cinema Spectatorship, submitted in 2025 in Groningen, and co-authored the article “Slow Cinematic Atmosphere: Developing an Enactivist‑Phenomenological Theory for Contemplative Spectatorship”, in Quarterly Review of Film and Video (2025). 

His work centres on the experiential dimensions of film spectatorship, with a special focus on slow cinema. Combining enactivist and phenomenological frameworks, he aims to probe how audiences engage with cinematic slowness and contemplative viewing experiences. In the Cinematic Beauty project, he explores how beauty is actually lived and felt by film viewers, in order to understand better what role beauty plays in their appreciation and enjoyment of films.

Anna Doyle, MA (PhD Student)

My name is Anna Doyle. I obtained a BA in Philosophy from the University Paris 1 - Pantheon Sorbonne and an MA in Arts and Languages from the EHESS. My Masters thesis was a comparative study of the poetic and political dimensions of two Armenian avant-garde filmmakers: Artavazd Pelechian and Sergei Parajanov, investigating their complex relationship to Soviet cinema and its internationalist discourse. This project triggered my interest in the political dimensions of poetry and of experiences of beauty in a socialist context. 

After my masters, I worked as a film critic at the East European Film Bulletin covering experimental film festivals around Europe (such as 25 FPS in Zagreb, the Berlinale, Bucharest Experimental Film Festival, Rotterdam IFFR, FID Marseille, AVANT in Sweden, Golden Apricot in Yerevan). I translated a book on experimental cinema called Radical Cinema by Christian Lebrat, which groups theoretical writings about filmmakers as diverse as Jean-Luc Godard, Jonas Mekas or Germaine Dulac. I have published on the ecological dimensions of Artavazd Pelechian’s films in journals such as Found Footage Magazine or MIRAJ (The Moving Image Review and Art Journal). Along with my passion for film criticism, I also have a practical approach to cinema, making my own photochemical experimental films. 

At the University of Groningen, I am highly enthusiastic to contribute to the Cinematic Beauty project with my own approach to research based on a philosophical understanding of the history of cinema, bridging my interest in East European cinema, avant-garde cinema and aesthetic philosophy. Some of the questions I raise are: how was beauty framed in discourses about avant-garde cinema in the region, in the postwar context, at a moment of liberation of artistic endeavours and disillusionment with revolutionary springs? If some theorists claim that beauty was treated in contempt by the avant-garde (for example Arthur Danto in his book The Abuse of Beauty), could there still be a certain beauty in avant-garde film?  And if so, what would be its role? Grounding the study of beauty in a trans-national and inter-disciplinary perspective on the aesthetics of film implies that the contingent experiences of filmmaking will be analyzed prior to universalist philosophical traditions of studies of beauty.

Prof. Dr. Julian Hanich (Principal Investigator)

Julian Hanich is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Groningen. He is the author of three monographs: The Audience Effect: On the Collective Cinema Experience (Edinburgh UP), Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear (Routledge) and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: City Girl (Edition Text + Kritik). With Martin Rossouw, he co-edited the award-winning What Film Is Good For: On the Values of Spectatorship (University of California Press) and with Daniel Fairfax he was responsible for the volume The Structures of the Film Experience by Jean-Pierre Munier: Historical Assessments and Phenomenological Expansions (Amsterdam UP). 

His research focuses on film aesthetics, cinematic emotions, film and imagination, film phenomenology, and the collective cinema experience. His work can be found at Julianhanich.de, Academia.edu and Researchgate.net. He is the principal investigator (PI) of the Cinematic Beauty: Exploring the Experience of a Major Aesthetic Phenomenon project.

Lara Perski, MA (PhD Student)

Lara Perski is a PhD Researcher in Film at the University of Groningen and is writing a conceptual history of cinematic beauty. Her research explores questions regarding the aesthetics and criticism of film, as well as film philosophy. She is also an expert in cataloguing and archival practices for time-based arts and, in the past, she had worked as the Lead Researcher on a project dedicated to indexing and annotation of a video art archive of the imai Foundation in Duesseldorf, Germany, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research. Prior to starting her current position, she was a Research Fellow at the Chair for Digital Arts at Culture Communication at the Witten/Herdecke University, Germany. She has also been active as a film critic and programmer, as well as an editor and translator for a range of art publications.

She has written about contemporary and experimental filmmakers such as Aki Kaurismäki and Lutz Mommartz, and explored such elusive topics as the offscreen space, the acquisition of taste, and contingency.