Asli Ozgen is assistant professor of media and culture at the University of Amsterdam. She teaches in the BA program in Media and Culture and the MA program in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image. Her research lies at the intersections of film historiography, critical archival studies, and memory activism. Rooted in intersectional feminist and decolonial praxis, her current research focuses on the audiovisual memory of contested pasts, as well as archival and activist practices concerning diasporic film heritages. Presently, she is working on a book about the audiovisual heritage of migration from Turkey to the Netherlands, with a particular emphasis on the political uses of film in (international and transnational) solidarity networks, as well as the archival status of this material.

With a background in postcolonial critical theory, Asli's earlier research focused on the feminist video art from the SWANA region. Later she relocated to the Netherlands to pursue doctoral research in the field of film-philosophy with Patricia Pisters, exploring the cinematic iterations of walking as a political act. Based on this research, Asli's monograph The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films (2022) offers a rich exploration of how walking ––as an everyday act of engaging with, resisting, and subverting the dominant politics of space–– informed, changed, and inspired cinematic aesthetics. Published in Amsterdam University Press's Film Culture in Transition Series, the monograph received ASCA Book Award.

Asli is currently scholar-in-residence at Eye Filmmuseum. At Eye, Asli works with diasporic, displaced, and (post)colonial collections to explore potential responses to the pressing need for 'decolonization'. While in the broader museum field these issues have been increasingly debated in the past years, the question here is how the decolonial critique might specifically intervene in the ontology of film museums, and how this critique might inform new ways of thinking about the role of film museums as actors of social and environmental justice. Asli's research at Eye aims to explore these concerns, propelling the debate from within the film archival field and with questions grounded in the everyday of archival practice – through film specific histories of anti- and decolonial thought and praxis.

Next to her academic work, Asli is also an internationally accredited film critic and a regular contributor to magazines, catalogues, and festivals. Since 2014, she is serving in the editorial board of Altyazi (TR), a film magazine and cultural NGO with a focus on politics of cinema and freedom of expression. 

Asli is also a trained and nationally accredited Confidential Advisor for Undesirable Behaviour (vertrouwenspersoon ongewenst omgangsvormen). Please see https://student.uva.nl/en/topics/confidential-advisers