In April, the FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission have finalized the selection for the 2026 FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Grant. The grant is an annual funding scheme that promotes academic research into broadcast archives and seeks to valorise scientific knowledge for the benefit of archival practice.
The Call for Projects received a high response. The competition was tight, with several projects being assessed as fundable. Out of 60 applications, the commission selected 2 projects based on criteria such as: the scientific quality of the proposal, the feasibility of the project, and the relevance of the project for FIAT/IFTA and for broadcast archives. In cases where two projects received the same scores, priority was given to those projects deemed to be in more urgent for funding.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose work will advance the field of media studies and archival practice internationally.
Dr. Leilane Menezes Rodrigues
Assistant Professor at Suffolk University
Our TV, Our Memory: Recovering the Lost Archive of ‘TV da Gente’ and its Significance for Black Representation in Brazilian Media
Dr. Leilane Menezes Rodrigues is working on the project “Our TV, Our Memory: Recovering the Lost Archive of ‘TV da Gente’ and its Significance for Black Representation in Brazilian Media”. She explores the “archival remains” of TV da Gente, which served as Brazil’s only Black-owned public television station between 2005-2007. Her research studies media ownership in Brazil in relation to racial inequalities and builds upon oral history interviews and an archival survey mapping the extant materials on the defunct TV station across collections of Brazilian audiovisual archives and online digital repositories.
Dr. Pablo Pietras
Professor at Universidad de Buenos Aires and researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Images Before Disappearance. Camera Rushes from Canal 9 News and the Archival Documentation of Argentina’s Disappeared (1972–1983)
Dr. Pablo Pietras is working on the project “Images Before Disappearance. Camera Rushes from Canal 9 News and the Archival Documentation of Argentina’s Disappeared (1972–1983)”. For his research, he collaborates with Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires, which holds a “collection of television news footage from Canal 9, consisting of approximately 16,000 film reels produced between 1972 and 1983, mainly in 16mm format.” Dr. Pietras’ project explores the archival value of camera rushes in fostering public memory at a time when Argentina marks the 50th anniversary of the 1976 military coup.
