Conference "Serial Power: Political Imaginaries and Global Television"

Television series have become one of the most widely shared and influential cultural forms of our time. Circulating across borders through global streaming platforms, they travel between audiences and cultures while remaining rooted in specific historical, social, and political contexts. In doing so, they do more than entertain or reflect existing realities: they shape how we imagine power, community, conflict, identity, and democracy. Through their narratives, characters, and representations of social life, television series offer ways of making sense of political worlds, negotiating collective identities, and envisioning alternative futures.

Serial Power: Political Imaginaries and Global Television explores the political dimensions of serial storytelling across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americasm seeking to expand our understanding of the global television landscape and challenge the enduring dominance of anglophone perspectives in television studies. The conference approaches television not simply as a medium through which political ideas are communicated, but as a cultural form that actively participates in the production of political imaginaries: the shared narratives, images, and aspirations through which societies understand themselves, interpret the present, and imagine what might come next.