Birgit Beumers is Professor Emerita in Film Studies at Aberystwyth University, UK, and currently holds a DFG-funded research grant on Central Asian film industries at the University of Passau, Germany. Her publications include A History of Russian Cinema (2009) and Performing Violence (with Mark Lipovetsky, 2009). She has edited a number of volumes, including The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov (2011, with Nancy Condee), and Cinema in Central Asia: Rewriting Cultural Histories (with Michael Rouland and Gulnara Abikeyeva, 2013), and Sexuality, Nudity and the Body in Soviet Cinema (with Eugénie Zvonkine and Catherine Géry, 2026). She is editor of the online journal KinoKultura and of the scholarly journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema.