• Ph.D., King's College London (United Kingdom), 2009

Research Interests:  

The theoretical framework of my research interests focuses on the polymorphism of cinema studies, as well as the potentiality of the “medium” as a process of intermediations. With this in mind, my first research project turned to the impact of digital cinema on contemporary film theory, looking at the relationship between celluloid and digital technologies. My main concern here was the existential implication of the viewer in the world screened, and what the particular structures of a technology may mean for the viewer-screen-world structure. While turning to the technical basis of the image, as well as the creative and perceptual activities of moviemakers and viewers alike, I discussed the digital not as a distinct rupture in the history of cinema but as a new form whose continuous contact with previous traditions creates a setting of technical and theoretical overlaps, exchanges, and developments. This project forms the basis of my monograph From Light to Byte: Toward an Ethics of Digital Cinema, forthcoming by the University of Minnesota Press (Fall, 2012). I am now in the early stages of a new research project concerned more specifically with cinema spectatorship and new media interactivity. As digital technology transcends media boundaries, I address contemporary forms of spectatorship by looking at the potential of physical and psychological engagement with the screen through interactivity in its various guises: CD/DVD-ROMs, DVD and Blu-ray Discs, e-cinema and online fandom, Virtual Reality communities, and computer game technologies. My concern lies in the relationship interactivity generates between the screen and the viewer/user/gamer, especially with reference to the new activity of the spectatorial role, which leads to a form of responsive identification. Here, I turn to the Nietzschean thrust of Pierre Klossowski's philosophy, where the corporeal “gesture” is given a particular prominence in the discussion of symbolic systems. Indeed, it is the possibility of breaking out of a deterministic setting and moving toward an existential creativity that interests me here, and which becomes of vital importance in my examination of digital spectatorship.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

Books

• Hadjioannou, M. From Light to Byte: Toward an Ethics of Digital Cinema.  University of Minnesota Press, December, 2012 . [from-light-to-byte]  [abs]

• Hadjioannou, M. "In Search of Lost Reality: Waltzing with Bashir." DELEUZE AND FILM Ed. Martin-Jones, D; Brown, W. Deleuze Connections.Edinburgh University Press, 2012, 104-120.  [abs]

• Chow, R; Hadjioannou, M. "Fathers in flux." Cultural Critique 114 (December, 2022): 23-39.
  
• Hadjioannou, M. "Documenting the Son/iconic Discord." Discourse 39:3 (2017): 356-375.
  <http://dx.doi.org/10.13110/discourse.39.3.0356>
• Hadjioannou, M. "In the Cold Night of the Day: On Film Noir, Hitchcock, and Identity." Cultural Critique 94:Fall (2016): 127-155.