Personal profile

Overview

Chrisoula Lionis is a writer and cultural producer based between Athens and Manchester.  Working at the intersection of visual culture, cultural politics, and resilience studies, Lionis holds a PhD in Visual Culture (UNSW Australia, 2013) and is the author of books Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (I.B. Tauris, 2016, 2022) and (ed) Comedy in Crises: The Weaponisation of Humour in Contemporary Art (Palgrave, 2023). She has published widely including in journals Social Text, Third Text, Cultural Politics, and the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology and has curated individual and group projects including Beyond the Last Sky: Contemporary Palestinian Art and Video (Australian Centre for Photography, 2012), Missing Time (UTS Gallery, 2022), and Traces of Displacement (Whitworth Art Gallery, 2023).

Lionis’ has held several international teaching and research positions, including at the National Institute for Experimental Arts (UNSW Australia) in Sydney, the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, and most recently a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester for Horizon2020 project Laughing in an Emergency: Humour, Cultural Resilience and Contemporary Art

Lionis is the co-director of the pedagogical platform Artists for Artists, Chair of Exhibitions at Hunar Symposia, and is currently a Research Fellow on Understanding Displacement Aesthetics - an AHRC project that analyses the impact of artistic responses to displacement and refugeedom.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (Visual Culture), UNSW Australia (2009-2013) Thesis: Punchline: The Emergence of Humour in Palestinian Art and Film

Bachelor of Art Theory (Honours, Class 1), UNSW Australia (2003-2007)

Memberships of committees and professional bodies

  • The College Art Association (CAA)
  • The International Council of Museums (ICOM) 
  • The International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS)

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

  • SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
  • SDG 17 - Partnerships for the Goals

External positions

Research Associate, National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Global inequalities

Keywords

  • visual culture
  • humour
  • cultural politics
  • memory studies
  • palestinian art
  • postcolonial studies

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