We are delighted to announce that Dr Claudy Op den Kamp, researcher at CIPPM, has been appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) Law and Humanities Hub (LHub) for 2025-2026.
The Law and Humanities Hub at IALS brings together scholars, artists, and practitioners who explore connections between law and the humanities. It’s a space where legal studies meets literature, film, art, and creative practice, exactly where Claudy’s work lives.
This fellowship recognises Claudy’s unique position at the intersection of copyright law, film preservation, and cultural heritage. Her work asks important questions: How do copyright laws affect our ability to access and creatively re-use cultural heritage? How can we balance protecting creators’ rights with preserving film history for future generations?
What makes Claudy’s approach special is that it’s not just theoretical. With a practical background in film preservation, she understands the real-world challenges that archives and filmmakers face every day. Her research directly tackles these issues, advocating for copyright exceptions that actually work for the people who need them.
Her influential book The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) reveals how copyright restrictions can keep important films locked away from public view, films that could teach us about history, culture, and society.
Recently, Claudy has been pioneering an innovative approach to academic research: video essays. Through prestigious fellowships at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, she’s created visual works like The Shadow Line (2022), Opening Pandora’s Box (2023), and Evidence of Things Not Present (2024).
This visual turn represents academic research that doesn’t just describe film and cultural heritage, but actually uses the medium itself to communicate ideas. She’s currently developing this approach further in a ‘videographic monograph’, titled First, expected in 2027.
During her fellowship at LHub, Claudy will join a diverse cohort of visiting fellows working across law and humanities, from refugee narratives to criminal justice history to digital rights. It’s an opportunity to exchange ideas, collaborate, and push the boundaries of how we think about law’s relationship with culture and creativity.
The LHub visitorship programme is designed to build leadership in law and humanities research, supporting scholars who are asking creative questions and finding new ways to answer them.
We are proud to see Claudy’s interdisciplinary approach recognised by IALS, and we’re excited to see what emerges from this fellowship.
For more information about Dr Claudy Op den Kamp’s work, visit her staff profile or contact her at copdenkamp@bournemouth.ac.uk
