Dr. Emiel Martens (1980) is a media lecturer, researcher, and producer. He graduated cum laude in both Media Studies and Human Geography at the University of Amsterdam, was a visiting scholar at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) at University of the West Indies, Mona, and holds a Ph.D in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation, entitled ‘Welcome to Paradise Island: The Rise of Jamaica’s Cine-Tourist Image, 1891-1951’ (2013), marked the first study of Jamaica’s early film history and its connections with the island's tourism and colonial history. 

Emiel joined the Department of Media Studies of the University of Amsterdam as a lecturer and researcher in 2004, where he is now working as Assistant Professor in Film and Visual Culture. In 2016, he also joined the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) to become a team member of the research project 'Worlds of Imagination' (ERC Consolidator Grant), a comparative study of film tourism in non-western contexts. His research interests, publications and talks cover the fields of Postcolonial (Media) Studies, Media Geography, Popular Geopolitics, Migration and Diversity Studies, Creative Industries, Film (and) Tourism, Humanitarian Communication, and Alternative Media, with a particular focus on the history, theory and praxis of the (Anglophone) Caribbean film and visual culture.

Besides his posts at the University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Emiel is also the founding director of  Caribbean Creativity, a non-profit organization committed to the production, programming and promotion of Caribbean and Caribbean-themed cinema, co-director of the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication, a non-profit organization aimed at better communication on international development, and co-owner of media agency Dudes in your Face (Dutch: Gasten in je Gezicht), where he, among other things, acts as producer and story editor of award-winning social impact films such as Welcome to the Smiling Coast (2016) and Gifts from Babylon (2018). In addition, from 2013-2019 Emiel functioned as a board member at NALACS, the Netherlands Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and he currently serves as film review editor at ERLACS, the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.