The FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission has selected two outstanding small-scale research projects for the 2026 edition of the Media Studies Grant. The grant aims to promote archive-based research and ensure the valorization of scientific knowledge for archival practice.

• Dr. Leilane Menezes Rodrigues – Our TV, Our Memory: Recovering the Lost Archive of ‘TV da Gente’ and its Significance for Black Representation in Brazilian Media
• Dr. Pablo Piedras – Images Before Disappearance. Camera Rushes from Canal 9 News and the Archival Documentation of Argentina’s Disappeared (1972–1983)

Why These Projects? A Look Inside the 2026 Grant Selection

By Dana Mustata, FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission Chair

Dr. Leilane Menezes Rodrigues
“Our TV, Our Memory: Recovering the Lost Archive of ‘TV da Gente’

What can archival precarity, loss and historical erasure tell us about the structural and systemic conditions that have perpetuated racial inequality in Brazil? Dr. Leilane Menezes Rodrigues’ project “Our TV, Our Memory: Recovering the Lost Archive of ‘TV da Gente’ and its Significance for Black Representation in Brazilian Media” speaks to this phenomenon by setting out on a quest to find out what happened to the audiovisual archives of TV da Gente and in doing so, reconstructing the short-lived history of Brazil’s sole Black-owned television station.

The Media Studies Commission commends Dr. Rodrigues’ project for charting archival challenges and examining media histories of relevance and urgency to Latin America. Rather than exploring racial inequalities through the lens of archival representations, her project focuses on Black-owned media heritage and its interventions in racial politics across the region. The promised result is an understanding of how racialised violence, visible in archival imagery, is reproduced through practices of broadcast licensing and ownership, the politics of archiving and preservation and the forging of collective memory.

The project stands out for the way it grapples with archival precarity and loss by surveying existing archival traces on TV da Gente across personal collections, institutional holdings, digital repositories and press clippings, alongside generating new historical documents in the form of oral testimonies. The Media Studies Commission believe that Dr. Rodrigues’ quest to recover a television history at risk of disappearance serves as a powerful example of how academic research can contribute to the active preservation of forgotten or precarious histories. The Commission also note that the challenges, questions and methodologies at the core of the project have the potential to inspire further explorations of archival precarity, historical silences and erasures in media histories across Latin America.

Dr. Pablo Piedras:
“Images Before Disappearance. Camera Rushes from Canal 9 News and the Archival Documentation of Argentina’s Disappeared (1972–1983)”

Dr. Pablo Piedras’ project “Images Before Disappearance. Camera Rushes from Canal 9 News and the Archival Documentation of Argentina’s Disappeared (1972–1983)” is a testament to how an archival collection once on the brink of destruction makes vital contributions to public memory and human rights histories. Working with the Canal 9 archive preserved at the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires, Dr. Piedras’ projects researches camera rushes from television news broadcasts dating from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the period coinciding with Argentina’s military dictatorship. The archival materials examined contain rare unedited footage of individuals who were forcibly disappeared during the dictatorial regime and for whom no other audiovisual documentation exists. The Media Studies Commission appreciate that the historical value of this archival collection is unique. Its value lies not only in preserving the public memory of repression during Argentina’s military dictatorship, but also in documenting human rights crimes and providing the families of those forcibly disappeared with rare surviving footage of their loved ones. The Commission was particularly impressed that the collection comprises news footage that was once discarded by Channel 9 and later recovered from a construction waste container by archivists at the Museo del Cine.

Dr. Piedras’ project does so much more than solely researching the history of Argentina’s military dictatorship through the lens of a unique and once endangered archival collection. His research also actively focuses on documenting human rights crimes and providing archival evidence that can support reparative efforts for the families of victims. A broader motivation behind Dr. Piedras’ research is to return rare surviving footage of individuals who were victims of political repression to their families, as well as to human rights organisations. Such aims speak to the far-reaching public value of academic research into television archives.

The Media Studies Commission were equally impressed that Dr. Piedras aims to corroborate his research into Canal 9 news rushes with research into human rights archives, and that this contextualisation of historical sources will be actively used to improve and enrich the metadata of the Canal 9 collection at the Museo del Cine. This is a project that grew out of a close collaboration between Dr. Piedras and the archivists at the Museo del Cine, and the Media Studies Commission highly praise this exemplary partnership between academic research and archival practice.