Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén

Elizabeth Castaldo Lunden is a lecturer at the film and media sections of the Department of Media Studies.

She holds a doctoral degree in Fashion Studies, from the Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University, a Master of Arts in Cinema Studies from the same institution, and a Lic. degree in Public Relations, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (Licenciada en Relaciones Públicas).

She was a visiting researcher at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California in 2015. In 2014, she discovered costume designer Jacques Fonteray´s private archive, and worked with Fonteray's family to donate the material in order to preserve his cultural legacy. Part of this collection can now be found at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. She is a founding member and communication director of the Libraries and Archives Scholarly Interest Group at SCMS - Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Castaldo Lundén's doctoral dissertation is a historiography of the Academy Awards red-carpet phenomenon. The study traced the liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions, understanding how public relations campaigns and the media articulated fashion discourses around the Oscars leading to the institutionalization of the red-carpet as a fashion event in its own right. She has presented her research in international conferences. She has published articles and guest-edited special issues in several academic journals.

Aside from her scholarly career, she worked as a PR agent in the entertainment and retail industries during more than one decade.

Elizabeth's research addresses the interrelationship between Hollywood and the fashion industry from a historical perspective. She focuses on the global circulation of cultural and economic capital, and how helped propel the international fashion system through Hollywood's intermedial reach. She is particularly interested in the study of media discourses originating in public relations, advertising, and other communication practices to understand how ideas travel into popular culture manifesting in social and cultural phenomena. Her work is heavily driven by archival research. The transdisciplinary nature of her work integrates fashion, film, and media history.

Her research interests include: Hollywood history, celebrity culture, Americana, globalization and mass media. American fashion and costume design history. Epiphenomenality. Public relations, advertising and marketing pratices within the culture industries. Questions of class, prestige, expertise and symbolic capital. Archival research. Experience-based learning, complex thought and transdisciplinarity.