51ÁÔĆć

When he first started at 51ÁÔĆć, Hugo Ljungbäck thought he wanted to pursue a career in film production. It wasn’t until he took his first film history class that he realized that there’s a lot more to films than just making them. He began work in film archiving and restoration as a sophomore in 2017 under the guidance of English and film studies associate professor Tami Williams. His project started as a study of the history of the 51ÁÔĆć Film Studies program (one of the oldest programs of its kind in the country), but before long, his focus shifted to the extensive collection of 16mm film reels being kept in Curtin Hall. Ljungbäck, alongside fellow undergraduate researcher Christian Balistreri, spent the next three years making new uses for this old archive.

Ljungbäck was busy during his time at 51ÁÔĆć beyond the 16mm archival project. He worked on a magazine produced by the Film department and ran a weekly movie night through the Honors College for a year. He also volunteered as a curator for the late Carl Bogner and the Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival in 2017 and 2018. It was then that Ljungbäck started investigating the history of queer filmmaking. Bogner also inspired him to pursue topics of coming of age, coming out, and personal biography in his own artistic work. Regarding his undergraduate research, Ljungbäck said, “I realized that the things I wanted to do mattered on a larger scale; rather than submitting a course paper that only the professor read, I could keep tinkering with those ideas and it wasn’t a waste of time.”

After graduating with a BFA in Film and Media Studies in 2020, Ljungbäck went on to get his MFA at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His focus was on moving image, but his work was interdisciplinary and experimental. His master’s thesis, titled “Queer Archiveography,” used historical film, film from his personal archive, images, and written word to express themes of memory, autobiography, and sexual empowerment.

His next step was University of Chicago, where he is currently pursuing a PhD. He initially thought he would pursue a project surrounding AIDS activist film and video, which he had started with Carl Bogner, but he is now developing a dissertation project focused on gay amateur filmmakers. He described a certain beauty in people making films in private to show friends and lovers. Often, it was their first chance to show themselves on screen, even if it was a small screen in their apartments. The films Ljungbäck is researching were only recently digitized, and he’s considering different ways to revitalize and preserve them.

Ljungbäck expressed that most of his favorite memories at 51ÁÔĆć are surrounding research. Professor Tami Williams was always there for guidance and support, but Ljungbäck enjoyed her hands-off approach to mentorship. She allowed him to focus on certain films or projects that interested him. Their work was still very collaborative; they founded the 51ÁÔĆć Moving Image Society together, they engaged with students, community members, and other scholars frequently, Ljungbäck was editorial assistant on two of Williams’ book projects, and they co-organized three symposia. While his future is still unknown, he said his experiences at 51ÁÔĆć allowed him to develop a lot of various skills in film production, research, archival work, and administration that should allow him to land some sort of position in academia—many of which he acquired all the way back as an undergraduate researcher.

Medical researchers have a duty to continuously add to the collective knowledge of the medical field so that practitioners can provide their patients with the best treatments available. As is the nature of medicine, human participants are central to this research. In order to participate in clinical studies, patients are usually connected to researchers by their practitioners. However, these practitioners cannot possibly know about every relevant study being conducted at any given time. As a result, many patients who could benefit from participating in these trials and many researchers struggling to find qualifying participants fail to connect. Taylor Wilcox, PhD candidate at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), is tackling this issue head on.  

Through her work as an undergraduate researcher at 51ÁÔĆć, Wilcox learned about the barriers that prevent patients from participating in clinical trials. As a graduate student, she founded Clinical Connections, an organization dedicated to not just connecting patients with studies, but also making medical research findings more accessible to patients so they can be better informed about their care. Clinical Connections is centered around MCW at the moment, but they have plans to expand to more institutions so they can serve people on a national and international scale.  

Wilcox started her research journey her first semester at UW-Milwaukee, working with Dr. Alexander Arnold in the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She assisted, then later took over for, a graduate student of Dr. Arnold’s in testing several different chemical compounds as potential therapies for neuropathic pain. Once she determined a compound was not toxic when introduced into a cell, she then tested its efficacy by measuring changes in nitric oxide signaling. In a drug discovery lab like this, Wilcox may have tested multiple compounds that eventually made it to animal or even human trial stages. She also found that working in a biochemistry lab helped her academically, as she gained practice with concepts and terms that she would later encounter in her classes. 

Beyond the hands-on experience Wilcox was getting in the biomedical field; she also made lasting connections. Dr. Arnold famously likes to run team-building activities for his lab, and Wilcox has fond memories of going kayaking, going to beer gardens, and getting ice cream with her lab team. When she graduated in Fall 2022, she was already taking her next steps in her Biomedical Sciences career. Dr. Arnold is a member of her dissertation committee, and he connected her to her current PI at MCW, Dr. Michael Widlansky. Wilcox can draw a direct line between her time as an undergraduate researcher and where she is now, continuing to explore new possibilities and shape the future of clinical care.