We are delighted that GUMELAB intern Valentina Mendez Höcherl has successfully completed her Master's thesis. In her thesis, entitled The roles of women in the Colombian drug trade and their portrayal in the narconovela Pablo Escobar - El Patrón del Mal, she investigates the role women play in the narconovela and the extent to which this influences viewers' understanding of the history of the Colombian drug conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. To this end, she first embedded the Colombian drug conflict in the historical context in order to build on this by examining the cultural staging of memory in the media with a focus on the representation of women. In a final step, she traced the development of historical and fictional stereotypes and archetypes in the narconovela. Congratulations on the successful completion of the Master's thesis.

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We are delighted that Catalina Brunetti has successfully completed her Master's thesis. In her thesis Serie Los 80: ficción televisiva como artefacto de memoria she analysed the Chilean series "Los 80", which portrays the life of a middle-class family during the military dictatorship. With an interdisciplinary perspective that interweaves reception, memory and gender studies, she analysed how personal and family stories are constructed within fictional programmes in the context of the national history portrayed. During a field research stay in Chile, she conducted interviews with Chilean viewers of the generación bisagra ("hinge generation"), i.e. the generation of those who grew up during the dictatorship and whose children were born at the time of democracy.

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We are delighted that GUMELAB scholarship holder Stephany Ortega has successfully completed her Master's thesis. In her thesis, entitled Recepción de reproducción de los constructos de género de la serie "Narcos" Colombia, she analyzes the influence of television series on the behavior and values of viewers based on the US series Narcos. Narcos depicts the rise and fall of Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar and the struggle of the Colombian state and the US Drug Enforcement Administration against drug trafficking. Ortega used an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach for her analysis and combined memory, gender and reception studies. During a field research stay in Medellín, she conducted interviews with ten students about their reception of the series and the historical narratives.

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We are delighted that GUMELAB scholarship holder Anika Rosczyk has successfully completed her Master's thesis. In her work, entitled "We all know such mechanisms." German-Chilean reception of history and gender roles of Colonia Dignidad based on the historical-fictional television series Dignity, she analyses the representation and reception of gender and history based on the German-Chilean co-production Dignity. The television series stages the German sect Colonia Dignidad and follows its co-operation with the Chilean military dictatorship. Rosczyk used an interdisciplinary approach for her analysis and combined memory, gender and reception studies. She focussed on different groups of viewers in Chile and Germany and conducted interviews with students, film producers, psychologists, lawyers and Colonia Dignidad experts. Congratulations on the successful completion of the Master's thesis.

Read more about the research stay and the tandem experiences of the GUMELAB scholarship holders.