Dr. Maciej Peplinski

Dr. Maciej Peplinski holds an M.A. in film studies from the Free University of Berlin and a PhD in arts studies from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His doctoral thesis Ambivalent Utopia. Science Fiction Film in the German Democratic Republic won the Alicja Helman Award for the best film studies dissertation in Poland in 2023. His current research focuses on the political and cultural history of the Central European region during the Cold War. His further research interests include media production studies, history of sound in popular cultures, and film genre theory. In 2017-2022 he worked as a junior researcher at the Leibniz-Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig. In 2022-24 he gained professional experience as a museum educator at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. During the visiting fellowship within the project Violence in East and West at the University of Konstanz he will focus on developing his new research proposal Weaponization of Bells and Political Exploitation of Acoustic Practices in Divided Germany: Freedom Bell in West Berlin and Peace Bell in Frankfurt (Oder).