This book explores the multifaceted portrayal of academia in higher education in film and television series from around the world. It analyzes how universities, research, teaching staff, and students are represented across cultures and genres, including Hollywood films, Indian comedies, European arthouse films, and Chinese propaganda narratives.

Combining perspectives from cultural and media studies, linguistics, and higher education research, the volume investigates how academic communities and life are dramatized, distorted, idealized, or satirized on screen. It examines the intersection of these representations with social issues such as class, race, gender, and power hierarchies. Through intercultural comparison and critical analysis, the book explores which elements of academic life are highlighted or omitted and how these choices shape public perceptions of higher education.

Academia on Screen is essential reading for educators, researchers, and students in media and cultural studies interested in how cinematic narratives about academia reflect and shape our understanding of intellectual life in the 21st century.

Lucia Krämer is Professor of British Studies with a focus on Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Passau in Germany. She has taught widely on questions of representation in film, television and other media, and her classes in British Cultural Studies regularly address the British education system. Her main fields of research concern phenomena of productive reception. This includes a strong interest in historical and biographical fiction and period drama. Her publications include a book on biofictional representations of Oscar Wilde from a media-comparative perspective (Peter Lang 2003) and a book about the reception of Bollywood in Britain (Bloomsbury 2016). She has published widely on the topic of adaptations (especially in relation to Indian cinema). She has also co-edited volumes about constructions of authenticity, about the interrelations of Media Studies and Postcolonial Studies, and about Remakes and Remaking (transcript 2015). Her current projects focus on the history of adaptation and Adaptation Studies, British period drama, Bollywood film remakes, franchises in Indian cinema, and the representation of academic life on screen.

Daniela Wawra is Professor of English Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Passau. Her research focuses on discourse analysis, media communication, and the sociocultural dimensions of language use. She is particularly interested in how identities, institutions, and ideologies are constructed and negotiated in public discourse. Her work frequently explores the intersections of language, power, and culture through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on linguistics, media studies, and cultural analysis. Her publications include studies on media representations of authority, identity, and privacy in contemporary culture, including analyses of screen narratives. Her current research examines academic archetypes and tropes in film and TV series, highlighting how storytelling represents and influences public perceptions of the academic world. She also regularly teaches (critical) discourse analysis and multimodal communication, often applying these frameworks to the analysis of film excerpts.