Jill Campaiola is a fourth-year Doctoral Candidate in Media Studies at Rutgers University. She is currently a Doctoral Research Fellow at the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies (SCILS). In 2009-2010, she will be a Research Assistant at the Center for Race and Ethnicity.

 

Her areas of academic interest include: Arab media, globalization, television, French visual culture, and post-colonial literature. She is currently working on her dissertation entitled "Local Roots and Global Wings: Television Drama and Hybridity in Moroccan Cultural Identities" under the supervision of Dr. Deepa Kumar.  In 2009, Jill Campaiola received a Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to develop her project and conduct field work research in Morocco (see abstract here).

 

Prior to her doctoral career, Jill Campaiola worked extensively in the documentary film industry. She held different positions such as Development Intern, Production Coordinator, and most recently Assistant Commissioning Editor in the documentary unit of the French-German cultural TV channel ARTE. Her love for film and the social sciences naturally led her to doctoral studies in Media Studies, and her multicultural background (a French-Moroccan mother and an Italian father) motivated her to investigate the notion of hybridity, or how individuals negotiate multiple cultural identities in the era of globalization.

 

She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Film  from the University of Strasbourg (France) with a concentration on film production, a Master of Arts in American Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in English/American Literature and Culture from the University of Paris - Sorbonne Nouvelle (France). She was born in Rome (Italy), grew up in Paris (France) and is currently living in New York City.