Dr Paola Voci
Lecturer
Chinese Languages and Culture
For Paola Voci, moving around a lot during lectures is a very important aspect of the way she teaches.
Dr Voci has been with the Division of Humanities for two years teaching Chinese language and culture, as well as a paper on Chinese cinema. Though she completed her undergraduate degree in Venice, and went on to study film theory and history at the Beijing Film Academy, Dr Voci gained her PhD from Indiana University in the United States. Before coming here, she spent time at a couple of American universities, "where the classes were a lot bigger than what I have now.
"I like to have very interactive lectures when I'm teaching, so I move among the students while I'm talking and encourage participation. I also use a lot of visual aids - which is not surprising, I guess, since my area of interest is visual culture - and I make sure there is plenty of interactive time in class. This kind of approach is especially important for teaching language." Dr Voci was this year's recipient of the OUSA teachers' award.
Expanding her research interest - visual culture in 20th-century China - is something Dr Voci is keen to continue.
"Film-making in China has often been seen as politically charged. Now, people are experimenting much more than they used to and often refuse to be simply judged according to their political stands. They're producing anti-intellectual films - art for fun - the sort of thing that might be looked down on here for being too commercial or might be considered too avant-gardish.
"And there's a whole different market for distributing films or videos including the internet, universities, cafes, international film festivals and television," she says.
