Dr. Argyro Nicolaou is a filmmaker, writer, and scholar from the island of Cyprus. Her writing has been published in the American Historical Review, Boston Art Review, MoMA post, and EUObserver; while her short films have screened at festivals and exhibitions in the US and Europe. Dr. Nicolaou is currently at work on Knowing Displacement, a book manuscript on the representation of Mediterranean displacements in literature, film, and visual art. Knowing Displacement works to undermine the contemporary concept of Fortress Europe by revealing the diachronic, and foundational, connections between the continent and its Mediterranean neighbors. Combining close readings with methods from critical theory, postcolonial studies, and film studies, the book shows that the transformation of the lived experience of displacement into works of narrative as an event of cultural translation, a remapping of the contours of political identity beyond the limits of nationality, and a platform for the emergence of an expansive, transnational subjectivity with the power of challenging hegemonic ways of knowing the world. Research for this book has been supported by numerous fellowships from Princeton and Harvard University, where Dr. Nicolaou received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Critical Media Practice in 2018. 

Dr. Nicolaou's media practice is similarly concerned with the representation of memory, conflict, and migration in the Mediterranean. She uses historical research, narrative and video to excavate underrepresented modes of being and knowing, including politics and art-making in ‘small’ and ‘unimportant’ parts of the world, like her native island of Cyprus.