Diego Cavallotti is Associate Professor in Film, Television and New Media (L-ART/06; SC 10-C1) at the University of Cagliari, Department of Humanities, Languages and Cultural Heritage, where he teaches Media Education, Post-Cinema and Digital Storytelling and Film Language and Theory.

He earned his PhD in Audiovisual Studies and Art History at the University of Udine, where, from 2017 to 2019, he worked as post-doc researcher and director of the film section at La Camera Ottica – Film and Video Restoration lab. Moreover, he taught Audiovisual Media Semiotics and Film and Video Preservation at the University of Udine.

He is one of the scientific coordinators of Udine/Gorizia’s FilmForum – International Film Studies Conference and MAGIS Spring School and founding member of its Media Archaeology section (composed now by Simone Dotto, Andrea Mariani, Simone Venturini, Sebastian Scholz, and Pepita Hesselberth). He is also a member of the MASN – Material Archival Studies Network (composed by scholars from the University of Udine, University of Lausanne, and University of Stockholm) and of the Inedits – Films Amateurs/Memoire d’Europe network; he is currently taking part in the Amateur Media Cultures and Cultural Memory and Media workgroups at Necs. From 2015 to 2019 he took part in the A History of Cinema Without Names network, coordinated by Leonardo Quaresima.

He is also involved in the following: a PRIN project entitled Modi, culture e memorie della produzione cinematografica italiana (Modes, cultures and memories of the Italian cinematographic production), coordinated by Mariapia Comand; Forme e tendenze del cinema italiano contemporaneo e prospettive formative (Forms and trends of the Italian contemporary cinema and educational perspectives) and La cultura audiovisiva in Sardegna all’epoca della neotelevisione (Sardinia and the audiovisual culture during the neo-tv era), coordinated by Antioco Floris. From 2018 to 2019 he took part in a PRID project entitled Mining the Italian Non-Theatrical Film and Non-Broadcast Video (1965-1995): Excavating a Neglected Media Heritage, coordinated by Simone Venturini.

He is a board member for the A-rated journals Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti, Immagine. Note di storia del cinema, and L’avventura. International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes, and of the book series Plexus (Meltemi).

In 2019 he has been awarded with the Limina International Prize for the best Italian translation of Siegfred Zielinski’s “Medienarchaeologie. In der Suchbewegung nach den unterschiedlichen Ordnungen des Visionierens” and Andreas Fickers’ and Annie van den Oever’s “Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Epistemological and Methodological Reflections on Experiments with Historical Objects of Media Technologies”, which appeared in Archeologia dei media. Temporalità, materia, tecnologia (Media Archaeology. Temporality, Matter and Technology, eds. Giuseppe Fidotta and Andrea Mariani).

He is the author of several publications for Italian and International journals such as Cinergie. Il cinema e le altre arti; Immagine. Note di storia del cinema; Cinema&Cie; Journal of Film Preservation; La Valle dell’Eden. Semestrale di Cinema e Audiovisivi; Necsus; Fata Morgana; Schermi. Storie e culture del cinema e dei media in Italia; and Zapruder. Rivista di storia della conflittualità sociale. Furthermore, he has published two books: Cultura Video. Le riviste specializzate in Italia (1970-1995) (Video Culture: The Italian Magazines [1970-1995]) (2018) and Labili tracce. Per una teoria della pratica videoamatoriale (Unstable Traces: A Theory of Amateur Video Practices) (2019).

His main research interests revolve around media archaeology; non-theatrical film and video; film, video and social movements; film philology; digital humanities; film preservation; history of film and video practices; archive theory; and film and media historiography.