Annemarie Kersten MA

PhD Candidate

Biographical Note

Annemarie Kersten (1983) received a bachelor's degree in Arts and Culture Studies and a master's degree in Media Studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her bachelor's thesis addressed the consecration of jazz music by the New York Times. For her master's thesis, she researched the extent to which a television program can function as a cultural forum by conducting narrative analysis on the HBO sitcom Sex and the City. The thesis concentrates on the tension between modern and postmodern relationship discourses and the question whether the program favors one or the other, or is used as a platform for discussion.

During her studies she became an editor for faculty magazine ROest, where she fulfilled the role of editor in chief in her Master's year. At the same time, she worked as a coder for an independent research bureau, working on projects for national newspapers.

After receiving her Master's degree in October 2006, she started working as a research assistant for Susanne Janssen and became involved in the research project Cultural Classification Systems in Transition at the Department of Arts and Culture Studies of Erasmus University. While working as a research assistent, she started working on her PhD project in February 2007 and then got a position as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Media & Communication in July 2008. Her PhD project focuses on film discourse and the changing classifications of film in the US, France, Germany and the Netherlands since 1955.