Kevin Smets is associate professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Belgium) and co-director of ECHO (Research group on Media, Culture & Politics). Trained in cultural history, he obtained a PhD in Film Studies and Visual Culture (University of Antwerp). His work mainly focuses on the intersections of media, migration and conflict. He has a long-standing interest in Turkey and has conducted fieldwork in Turkey, Germany and London. He has also been a visiting scholar at Bilgi University Istanbul, Freie Universität Berlin, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) London and University of Oxford.

At VUB, he teaches the course “Film history” and supervises master and PhD students. Previously he also taught other courses such as “Visual culture” and “Media, Culture & Globalization Theories” in Dutch and English.

Currently his two major research projects are: (a) Reel Borders, funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant, which explores the relations between borders and film, and (b) Far Right Fictions, which addresses the role of audiovisual fiction in the far right sphere. Across different projects, Kevin enjoys working with interdisciplinary teams and combining traditional communication studies methods with ethnography and participatory and visual methods.

He was vice-chair of the Diaspora, Migration & Media division of ECREA (European Communication Research & Education Association) from 2016 to 2021. He was also a member of the Jonge Academie of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, and is a member of the general assembly of FARO, the Flemish Institution for Cultural Heritage, and a founding member of BIRMM (Brussels Interdisciplinary Research centre on Migration and Minorities).