Dr Hristova is a historian of media and culture. Her research is at the intersection of media and communication history, critical whiteness studies, gender studies, social movements, and critical approaches to methodology. Dr Hristova's previous research examined the history of women's labour in media and communication research and its implications for disciplinary foundations and research methodology. Some of this research was published in The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies (Goldsmiths, 2024) and in the International Journal of Communication (2022). 

Dr Hristova's current research project is Graffiti, Politics, Place, which seeks to determine the ways in which graffiti function as a form of political and cultural communication, heritage making and preservation in the postcolonial/devolved North Wales. Graffiti, Politics, Place has been part funded by Taith.

Dr Hristova teaches modules on visual culture, gender, race, research methods, media ethics, and social movements.

Dr Hristova is a current recipient of WREC funding to organise and run Write Now! Summer 2025 writing retreats for Early Career Researchers at Bangor University.

  • PhD: Communication Studies - Critical Media Studies (Graduate Minor in American Studies) --- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
    University of Minnesota,
  • BA: American Studies and English Literature (Hons) --- University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
    University of Sussex,
  • MPhil: American Studies --- University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
    University of Sussex,
Gender, race, class, intersectionality in media and film Critical media studies Feminist media studies U.S. visual culture, history and politics Media and communication theory and research methods Critical race theory and critical whiteness studies History and historiography of media and communication studies Social movements Capitalism, neoliberalism and consumerism

2024

2022

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2024

  • End of Year Showcase

    End of year showcase of creative and research work by students in the School of Arts, Culture, and Language

    7 Jul 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Contributor)
  • Research Roundtable

    Roundtable discussion with Film, Media, and Journalism undergraduate students whose Research Projects received First Class marks.

    7 Jul 2024

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Organiser)
  • Expanding the curriculum/making roots visible: teaching through feminist historical recovery

    Academic canons are, by definition, contrary to expansion. They identify, fix, and calcify knowledge about origins, figures, and ideas that characterize the boundaries of a particular field. Those calcifications are then perpetuated by curricula that follow conventional wisdom in lockstep. Thus, ideas perceived to be unconventional to a field—outside those boundaries—are marginalized until they are virtually invisible. The papers in this panel intervene in traditional historiographic processes in the field of media studies and chart a new trajectory for teaching the history of media studies, of mass communication, of media theory, and of journalism.

    Our panel features the work and careers of several women who were either marginalized in—or excluded from—the traditional media studies canon because of their gender, race, political affiliation, or identity. Each woman represented a revolutionary idea, approach, category of media - public access to images, anti-racist cultural criticism and journalism, and holding Hollywood studios accountable for the products they produce. The contributions of these women underscore, not only the need to question the current canon, but also the need to question the goal of canonization itself. These women have the potential to decentralize and expand our knowledge about media studies history.

    Collectively, this panel addresses the intersection of feminist historical recovery and teaching, especially in the undergraduate classroom. Diana Kamin explores the uses of the Picture Collection at NY Public Library, originally curated by Roman Javitz. Elena Hristova critically reflects on teaching in the undergraduate classroom with Fredi Washington’s columns in the People’s Voice as a way to provide a usable political past to students developing their practice as cultural critics. Aimee-Marie Dorsten surveys the research of Mae D. Huettig, Jeannette Sayre Smith, and Helen MacGill Hughes to provide an important feminist history to the development of the political economy of communication.

    The panel provides an opportunity to revise, recover, and teach a richer history of media studies by highlighting women who were researchers, innovators, and progressive public intellectuals and critics. We aim to show that the relationship between these women and their ideas offer more robust teaching materials and methods than the current media studies historiography can provide. Mary Vavrus will provide a response to the papers presented.

    30 May 2024

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Publication launch & sharing event "The Ghost Reader: Recovering Women's Contributions to Media Studies"

    14 Feb 2024

    Links:

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)

2023

2015