Dr. Owen Lyons

Owen Lyons is an Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director of the Documentary Media MFA program in the School of Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD in Cultural Mediations from Carleton University and an MA in Media Culture from the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include Weimar cinema and culture, film history and media archaeology, and the visual culture of financial markets. His book, Finance and the World Economy in Weimar Cinema (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), addresses depictions of finance, speculation and capital that appear in the films and visual culture of the Weimar Republic, and argues that an understanding of these depictions of finance is essential in achieving a more complete picture of core debates surrounding gender, nation and modernity in during this formative period. He has also published on the centrality of the trope of “gold” to the fascist economic imaginary and sense of authenticity in the post-Weimar cinema of Luis Trenker and Karl Hartl. His recent research has addressed digital media and the use of generative machine-learning for the production of moving images. He is a filmmaker and musician and is currently producing a feature-length documentary on the history of his family during the “troubles” in Ireland and their connection to key media events of the 1950s and 60s.