Michael Wedel, born in 1969, is Professor of Media History in the Digital Age since 2009 and Vice President for Research at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (formerly Academy of Film and Television "Konrad Wolf") in Potsdam since 2013. He received his doctorate in 2005 with a thesis on the history of the development of music film in Germany ("Der deutsche Musikfilm. Archäologie eines Genres 1914-1945," published in 2007). From his study of the social functions of various genres (including the music film, the Hollywood war film, the German crime film, and the international fantasy film), he developed a comprehensive theoretical examination of genre poetics in historical change. In numerous individual studies, many of which are published in his book "Filmgeschichte als Krisengeschichte. Schnitte und Spuren durch den deutschen Film" (published in 2011), he has unfolded a notion of film history as "crisis historiography."

He is the director of "Cinepoetics - Center for Advanced Film Studies ," a research group founded in October 2015. He is also a part of the directorate of the Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM), co-editor of the series "Film, Television, Media Culture" published by Springer VS, a member of the editorial board of the journal New Review of Film and Television since 2010, and a member of the editorial board of the Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung since 2012. From 2005 to 2009 he was Assistant Professor for Theory and History of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He was Associate Researcher for the field of media in the research project "Music Theater in Germany 1900-1945" (2000-2003) at the Universities of Bayreuth and Utrecht. From 2006 to 2009 he was one of the project leaders of the interdisciplinary cultural theoretical research focus "Imagined Futures" at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). From 2011 to 2014 he was Scientific Director of the Filmmuseum Potsdam. In 2011 and 2013 he was nominated for the Willy Haas Prize, which honors significant publications on film in Germany.