Luis Freijo

Luis Freijo is a Research Associate at the Department of Film Studies at King’s College London, where he works for the project AGE-C: Ageing and Gender in European Cinema. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, a MA by Research from the University of Birmingham and a Joint Degree in Journalism and Audiovisual Communication from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid. He has held positions as postgraduate teaching associate and research assistant at the University of Birmingham, and as University Teacher at the University of Liverpool. He also has a professional background in written press, radio and, especially, national television in Spain.

Research Interests
Ageing and Gender in European Cinema
Spanish Television
World Cinema Theory
Film Genre Theory
The global film Western

Luis Freijo specialises in World Cinema theory, film genre theory and the global Western, as they apply to film aesthetics and politics. His current research is dedicated to the study of ageing and gender within the project AGE-C: Ageing and Gender in European Cinema, funded by VolkswagenStiftung (2023-2026), where he intends to apply methodologies based on genre and aesthetics but also based on his previous professional experience in Spanish television.His previous research was focused on recalibrating film genre theory to make it relevant to the field of World Cinema studies, and not just to Hollywood films. He utilises the Western as the genre of context, under the premise that if the Western can be de-Westernised, then any genre can. He has recently contributed chapters on the relation between genre filmmaking and politics to 'Sense8: Transcending Television' (2021), 'The Routledge Companion to European Cinema' (2022) and 'Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash' (2022), and has co-authored a new theorisation of World Cinema published in Transnational Screens (2021).