Welcome to the Netherlands Film Academy’s Research Department (Lectorate). We are responsible for growing and nurturing a practice-based research mentality among the students, staff and the teachers of the Film Academy – and sharing our work beyond our four walls into the global film community. Across different activities, we instigate new research projects and think about new ways to teach and share the outcomes. Our initiatives offer students, graduates, staff and film professionals varied possibilities to explore their curiosities and experiment with cinema as a powerful, playful tool for research.

Research is commonly seen through the lens of academia. But we believe it is a lively and dynamic mindset that is cultivated through practice. In fact, in their daily practice, students, teachers and other film professionals are already researching and gaining (practical) knowledge. They just may not know it yet. In recognising, harnessing and supporting this process – and retrieving the innovative outcomes that it produces – we can feed it back into education, broadening the horizon of cinema and shaping its future.

Three core pillars form the foundations of our department: 

Cultivating from the Ground Up 
We have no set thematic research agenda. Our projects grow organically out of the personal and professional interests and challenges that exist in our educational ecosystem. This allows us to respond directly to the most relevant issues of our film community. 

Practice-based Research
We think playful experimentation is an invaluable method of producing and gathering new knowledge and insight. It can be done by anyone, from any department or field, and it can take any form – whether it be artistic, technological or pedagogical. 

Feeding Education
We see research as circular and collaborative: it should always inform and enhance teaching, learning and infrastructure within the Film Academy and other institutions.

The core team consists of the Head of Research (Lector/Professor) Mieke Bernink, project coordinator and researcher Stan Liguziński and producer Kris Dekkers. The Research Department embraces a research mentality itself at every step; it was born – and continues to evolve – in a circular way. The department builds on and channels the knowledge gathered through the Academy’s Master of Film: Artistic Research in and through Cinema, which Bernink designed, set up and ran for 12 years as the department’s incubator project, Dekkers supported as general coordinator and Liguziński attended as a researcher. As the department expanded beyond the programme, the Master’s continues to feed back into it in collaboration with its core staff. Each of our Master's teacher-researchers is allotted research time as active members of the Research Group (Kenniskring). The Research Department now focuses on enlarging the scope of the department. The team works on finding new funding opportunities and collaborations to create innovative research projects for the whole Academy and the wider film community.

Our activities as a research hub are ever-evolving and often overlapping. Through multiple initiatives, we have created the conditions to grow and cultivate new practice-based research – be it artistic, technological or pedagogical – that feeds back into the Academy. This includes The Greenhouse, The AI Greenhouse, the AI Research Group, AIR, the VR Academy, the Research Group, the Fellows Group, FilmED as well as offering the opportunity to spontaneously propose a project to us. 

The project we grew out of the Master of Film: Artistic Research in and through Cinema is now a living feedback system for enacting and teaching new research. We are also working on the challenge of how to gather, share and make research tangible which involves thinking about creating new platforms, institutional infrastructures and events. The Research Atlas, the NFA Research Weekend, Turning Round the House and our Publications are our responses to these questions. 

You can read more about each project by clicking through the links or reading a more in-depth page on our vision.