Giovanna Fossati

Biography

Giovanna Fossati is Professor of Media Heritage, Technology & Culture at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Before joining Utrecht University, Fossati was Chief Curator (2009–24) and Director of Collection & Knowledge Sharing (2023–4) at Eye Filmmuseum, where she worked since 1997. She also served as Professor and Chair of Film Heritage and Digital Film Culture at the University of Amsterdam (2013–24), where she taught in the MA Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image program since its inception in 2003.

Fossati's research focuses on film history, technology, restoration, digitization, and audiovisual archival practices, with a recent emphasis on global and sustainable approaches to media heritage and preservation. She is the author of From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition (2009; revised edition 2018), co-author (with Tom Gunning, Joshua Yumibe, and Jonathon Rosen) of Fantasia of Color in Early Cinema (2015), and co-editor of The Colour Fantastic: Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema (2018).