Roel Vande Winkel is currently writing a monograph on Belgian cinema (audiences, distributors, exhibitors, producers) under the German occupation (1940-1944) and his sharing his research results on the website CINEMA IN OCCUPIED BELGIUM In October 2023 he will be launching the new research project "Propaganda, Media, Culture and Public Life under the German Occupation (1940-1945): local, national and transnational perspectives" (with Louis Fortemps).

Roel Vande Winkel has a background in history (MA) and communication studies (PhD). He is associate editor of the "Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television" and associate professor of film and television studies at the KU Leuven (Institute for Media Studies) and at the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium. He is very interested in collaborating with researchers who are compiling and analysing empirical data (1914-1945) about film distribution, exhibition, reception in or across specific cinemas, cities, regions or countries.

He published several Dutch-language monographs on Belgian film history and edited the volumes ‘Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema’ (with David Welch, 2007, rev. 2011), ‘Perspectives on European Film and History’ (with Leen Engelen, 2007), ‘Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around the World’ (with Daniel Biltereyst, 2013), 'Researching Newsreels. Local, National and Transnational Case Studies' (with Ciara Chambers and Mats Jönsson, 2018) and 'Film Professionals in Nazi-Occupied Europe' (with Pavel Skopal, 2022).