Below is the Spring seminar programme for the Centre for Media Research at
the University of Ulster. All welcome. Admission free.
Máire Messenger Davies, Director CMR
Wednesday February 8th
GUEST SPEAKER – Developing children’s understandings of political
conflicts and wars: the role of the media
Dr. Peter Lemish, Department of Communication, Sapir College, Israel and
Visiting Research Fellow, University of Ulster, July 2006. Peter Lemish
will discuss analyses of video productions whose intention was to present
specific political conflicts and/or their resolution to children and young
people. It will discuss two studies addressing this topic: The first
analyzing 33 films from over 20 countries, selected as candidates for the
prestigious Prix Jeunesse, the international competition for broadcast
media for children. Framed by this broader analysis, the second study was
undertaken in July in Northern Ireland, applying these researches to this
specific situation. These studies raise questions for further research
with producers and educators.
Dr. Lemish’s seminar will also be the occasion for the launch of the
latest CMR Media Policy Briefing Paper, ‘Children, Media and Conflict.’
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
Wednesday February 22nd
GUEST SPEAKER - Understanding national characteristics of Baltic media
Dr. Auksė Balčytiene, Chair of the School of Journalism at
Vytautas Magnus
University in Kaunas, Lithuania, describes and explains major structural
changes that have taken place in the Baltic countries’ media. She will
discuss the tendencies of media development in Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia which are similar to those in other countries, and will also
discuss ways in which phenomena such as economic restructuring,
technological improvement and the professionalisation of journalism,
differ due to national specifics in the cultures of journalism.
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
Wednesday March 8th
CMR PRESENTATION - The academy and media policy: can we make a
difference?
Máire Messenger Davies and Andy White will present some of their work for
the CMR Policy strand, describing interventions in public debates from two
perspectives. First, through providing an academic voice in consultation
exercises organised by official bodies such as the Department for Media,
Culture and Sport, the BBC and Ofcom. Second, through providing a channel,
through research, for members of ‘the public’ to participate in debates
in the public domain. In particular, Máire M. Davies will describe her
recent audience studies with children in Ireland and the UK – that is,
with people who officially have no place in ‘the public sphere’.
PhD Respondents: David Burrowes; Julian Kucklich
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
Wednesday March 22nd
JOINT GUEST AND CMR PRESENTATION – Looking at Old Photographs: Form,
Function and Fakeability
Dr Vivienne Pollock, Curator of the Historic Photographs Collections at
the Ulster Museum in Belfast will give an illustrated lecture on the use
of photographs as historical documents. Using examples from the Museum's
diverse collections, she will talk about the technological, cultural and
interpretative contexts, which shape how we see and read the past from
pictures. Gail Baylis will explore the issues raised by Dr Pollock by
considering the context of secondary reproduction. She will focus on late-
nineteenth century Irish eviction photographs and pay particular attention
to issues of representation and the construction of cultural memory.
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
Wednesday March 29th
GUEST SPEAKERS – From cinema to sitting room
Jeff Hulbert, Project Manager and Richard Clarke, Deputy Project Manager
of Newsfilm Online, will discuss this exciting new resource for Higher and
Further Education in the UK. Due for delivery in 2007, Newsfilm Online
will be a gateway to nearly 100 years of news. It will make 3,000 hours
of television news and cinema newsreels taken from the huge collection of
the ITN/Reuters archive, available online for teaching, learning and
research.
Venue – 1.45 pm, LT 14 Central Buildings, Coleraine campus
Wednesday April 5th
CMR PRESENTATION - Comparative Film Studies: problems and hopes.
Paul Willemen and Valentina Vitali will examine the preconditions of a
possible discipline, Comparative Film Studies, and present some of the
problems involved in the development of such a theoretical paradigm within
Cultural Studies. They will specifically refer to action cinema and the
economics of a film industry in India as a case study and to action women
('luchadoras') in Mexico; Blaxploitatıon cinema heroines in early US
serials and kung-fu ('wuxia') women in Hong Kong. They will also give an
update on the UU-CSCS Bangalore PhD programme in Comparative Film Studies:
its organization and running; its intellectual aims and content and the
enrolled students and their research.
PhD and RA respondents: Di Liu and Felicia Chan
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
EASTER BREAK
Wednesday 3rd May
GUEST SPEAKER - Landscape, photography and memory.
Liz Wells, Principal Lecturer in Media Arts and Director of the research
group for Land/Water and the Visual Arts, University of Plymouth, and
author of Photography: a Critical Introduction (2004) and A Photography
Reader (2002) will consider the contribution of photography to the
construction of
histories of place. She will explore examples from contemporary critical
photographic practice in relation to land, environment, heritage and
memory.
Venue – 1.00pm, The Link Lounge, Coleraine Campus
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