Ella Harmon
Ph.D. Student
Ella Harmon (they/any) is a PhD student in the Department of German and Critical Thought. Their work explores how economic systems reshape our metabolic relation to the earth and how ideology operates through technology, film, and new media. From winter 2025 through summer 2026, Ella served as the Documentary Specialist in Residence for Northwestern’s RTVF department. They are also a practicing filmmaker working on themes of labor, repetition compulsion, and queerness.
Ella holds an M.F.A. in Documentary Media with a certificate in Critical Theory from Northwestern and a BLA from Sarah Lawrence College with concentrations in Philosophy and Film. They have taught classes and workshops across Northwestern’s film programs at the pre-college, undergraduate, and M.F.A. levels. They also studied at Oxford University (Wadham). In 2023 and 2024, Ella received a Post-Graduate Research Grant from the DAAD for their ongoing project, “Towards a Socio-Ecological Theory of So-Called Primitive Accumulation.” Ella’s academic writing has appeared in Spectra and the Princeton and LMU conference Faking It and Making It, and is forthcoming in Rethinking Marxism. Their film work has been covered in Movie Maker Magazine and Rolling Stone, and screened internationally, including at the Workers Unite Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and NFMLA.
Interests: German Idealism, 19th-century German literature, classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the Frankfurt School
Ella holds an M.F.A. in Documentary Media with a certificate in Critical Theory from Northwestern and a BLA from Sarah Lawrence College with concentrations in Philosophy and Film. They have taught classes and workshops across Northwestern’s film programs at the pre-college, undergraduate, and M.F.A. levels. They also studied at Oxford University (Wadham). In 2023 and 2024, Ella received a Post-Graduate Research Grant from the DAAD for their ongoing project, “Towards a Socio-Ecological Theory of So-Called Primitive Accumulation.” Ella’s academic writing has appeared in Spectra and the Princeton and LMU conference Faking It and Making It, and is forthcoming in Rethinking Marxism. Their film work has been covered in Movie Maker Magazine and Rolling Stone, and screened internationally, including at the Workers Unite Film Festival, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and NFMLA.
Interests: German Idealism, 19th-century German literature, classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the Frankfurt School