Zara Luna Hjelm
About me
Zara Luna is a doctoral student in Gender Studies at Stockholm University since the autumn of 2023. Her research interests encompass Visual Culture, such as Art- and Film Theories, and Decoloniality, among other things. In her research project, she explores the representation and intersections of transnational and transracial adoption in film and activism, particularly in digital spaces. Thus, she examines various forms of adoption narratives in relation to colonialism, identity formation, and trauma—putting transnational and transracial adoption in the context of coloniality and modernity to challenge the hegemonic understanding of adoption. Her project intends to fill the gap of lacking research regarding adoption and contribute by centering adoptees' voice, bringing nuance and reclaim the adoption narrative, particularly focusing on the social movement and debate in Sweden. The project is a part of the VR-funded Gratuate School GENHDI (The Graduate School in Gender, Humanities, and Digital Culture), which is a collaboration between the Centre for Gender Research (Uppsala University), Department of Ethnology, History of Religion, and Gender Studies (Stockholm University), and the School of Culture and Education (Södertörn University).
Before her doctoral studies, she earned a degree in Bachelor of Arts with a major in History of Art and Visual Communication at Linköping University in 2019. Her thesis, The Art of Performing (2017), concerned gender and identity formation in performance art—focused on the artists Marina Abramovic and Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay). She continued her studies at Linköping University, where she in 2021 acquired a Master of Art in History of Art and Visual Communication and a Master of Science in Gender Studies with a specialization in intersectionality and change. For her M.A., she wrote two theses: the first one, Children of Colonialism (2019), centered around paintings of children and childhood from the 19th century in art, reflection on how colonialism affected visual representation from an intersectional viewpoint; in her second thesis, Freedom Fighters and Bloodstained Icons (2021), she examined the discourse on two monuments relating to 2020's Black Lives Matter demonstrations, putting it into the context of Sweden's colonial and anti-racist discourse in addition the historical phenomenon of 'damnatio memoriae'. She also wrote two theses for her M.Sc., Blood, Sperm, and Tears in Extreme Cinema (2020) and Mirror Mirror (2021), which both analyzed the embodiment of the sexed body in addition to the cultural and phenomenological experience in film through digital techniques. In 2021, she joined the program in Religion in Peace and Conflict at Uppsala University, where she attained a Master of Arts in Theological Studies in 2023. Her thesis, Woven from Hundreds of Flowers (2023), focused on religious traditions, collective memory, and gender representation in the Nepali film White Sun (2016).
Parallel to her academic career, she has been active in human rights organizations working towards changing the law and culture of consent in Sweden. In addition, she is currently working as a film journalist, where she publishes reviews and articles regularly, predominantly in the online magazine Kultmagasin.
Her supervisors are Professor Lena Gemzöe and Associate Professor Johanna Gondouin.
