Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Screen Studies at SOAS University of London. She is a researcher, teacher, filmmaker, and film curator, and her work aims to combine film scholarship and practice in mutually enlightening ways. From 2019 to 2025, she is the Principal Investigator of the project "African Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies", which is funded by a European Research Council grant.

As a filmmaker, Lindiwe has recently completed directing two documentary films: 'Out of the Box: The Screen Worlds of Judy Kibinge' (2023) and 'From One Woman to Another: The Screen Worlds of Bongiwe Selane' (2023). These films were nominated for Best Educational Film at the 2023 Learning on Screen Awards in the UK, and are currently being screened at festivals, events, and universities around the world; in 2025 they will be made freely available on the Screen Worlds website.

In the past Lindiwe has made film adaptations of literature (for example, of Olive Schreiner and Vladimir Nabokov’s writing), and film adaptation and cultural appropriation are also topics she has reflected on in depth in her scholarly work – for example, in her first book, 'African Film and Literature' (Columbia UP, 2009).

Lindiwe is a Co-Founder of Film Africa and of the Cambridge African Film Festival, which she directed and curated for many years.