Dear All,
the Postgraduate Network newsletter, edited by Helen Thornham, is now
available on our website.
Among the content: Ulster 2006 Annual Conference report, 2007 Bristol Annual
Conference info, PGN events in Aberystwyth and Oxford in Spring 2007, the
New Executive Committee.
You can download a pdf copy from
http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/newsletter/MeCCSA_PGN_Newsletter_November_2006.pdf
or simply have a look at the text attached at the bottom of this message.
Best Wishes,
Salvo
Communications, MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
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MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Newsletter: November 2006
This newsletter is for members of the PGN, to keep you up to date of past
and upcoming events for the 2006/7 academic year. It reports on the annual
conference held in June this year, and offers information about upcoming
postgraduate events in conjunction with the MeCCSA PGN. Finally, details
about the website, organization of events, and some ideas about the network
are found at the end. This network is for postgraduate students, run by
postgraduate students and any input and suggestions about our activities are
always welcome!
Third Annual MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference.
University of Ulster 22nd-23rd June 2006
Delegates
There were 65 delegates at the conference, including those not giving
papers. Those not giving papers had heard of the event either through the
MeCCSA list, or from previous postgraduate events (The Irish Postgraduate
Film Research Seminar, for example). The feedback from the delegates has
been excellent. This was a first conference for many of the delegates, who
all said it was a friendly and supportive conference. The quality of the
papers was fantastic and the discussions after mostly over-ran the allotted
time. The MeCCSA Postgraduate Executive Committee all said that the
confidence levels of presenters, and quality of presentations were clearly
increasing. Postgraduates clearly need an arena such as this to present.
Topics
The topics of papers were diverse with papers on new media, music, identity,
film, print media, and gender. We also attracted specific Irish themed
papers from Trinity College, Dublin, QUB and the University of Ulster as
well as practice based PhD’s on both film and music. The scope of the event
seems to be getting wider, and the quality of the papers both in terms of
content and presentation is excellent. Titles included:
- Playing the Revolution in Military Affairs in Computer Games
- “It Had to be You”: Musical Nostalgia in the Ephron Trilogy
- Environmental Direct Action (EDA) and Deconstruction Neo-Liberalism or
Counter-Hegemony?
- Zimbabwe’s Media Online: Preachers of Hate, Purveyors of Violence or
Democratic Public Spheres?
- How does it sound when you are living dangerously? An analysis of sound
in Peter Weir’s last Australian movie (1982)
- Visible Victims and the Politics of Suffering in ‘Omagh’
- ‘Can this happen to a normal woman?’: Ginger Snaps, Gender and Werewolves
Plenaries
Plenary sessions this year were organized as a result of the feedback from
the 2005 Cardiff conference. Consequently they focused on life after the PhD
(‘The PHD and After’) and a more politics emphasis on the effects of the RAE
on young academics and PhD students (‘The RAE and Me’). The PowerPoint from
the latter plenary can be found on the website. There is clearly anxiety
around what to do immediately after the PhD in terms of being a junior
academic, and the sessions were aimed at highlighting some of the options
available to current PhD students. The Plenaries were a mix of personal
narratives by PhD students who had recently completed and successfully found
work and political insights regarding the effect of the RAE on job
opportunities, and wider reports on what other PhD students had gone on to do.
Fourth Annual MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference
Next year’s conference (June 2007) will be hosted by the University of the
West of England (UWE) in Bristol.
Einar Thorsen is the main organizer for the conference and call for papers
and information about the event will be posted on the website and emailed
early in the New Year.
This conference will have a more specific aim of showcasing students, and
will include workshops on teaching practices and more personal histories of
life immediately after the PhD by young academics. Peter Golding has also
preliminarily agreed to a plenary session on publishing and as a co-editor
of the European Journal of Communication, chair of the European Sociological
Association Media Research Network, and co-chair of the European Science
Foundation Programme on media research, his session promises to be exciting
and informative. Other speakers will include Jane Arthurs, Helen Kennedy
and Mark Jancovich (to be confirmed). Look out for information about this
event on the website, and keep an eye on your emails!
This is a must for all postgraduate students.
Put it in your diary now!
Other MeCCSA Postgraduate Events for 2006/7
The MECCSA PGN is also working closely with Aberystwyth and Oxford this year
to bring you two smaller ‘training’ events in the form of one and two day
sessions. These will be billed as training events to encourage institutions
to financially support their students to attend. As you will all be aware,
your institution receives money to ‘train’ you and, rather than offering a
‘generic’ skills day, we thought we’d offer more media-specific events which
might actually be useful! Of course these events are also networking
activities and will offer a limited amount of students a chance to showcase
their own work.
‘Sharing Experience’ Audiences in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies
3rd-4th April 2007: University of Wales, Aberystwyth
This event will run methodology and teaching workshops, as well as providing
a platform for researchers to present their work.
It aims to
- provide a forum for research students in media, communication and cultural
studies to present and discuss their work in a friendly and supportive
environment
- encourage interdisciplinary work, and further develop and strengthen the
broad field of audience and reception studies
- offer workshops on methodology, as well as on issues of teaching in media,
communication and cultural studies, with a particular focus on the audience
- ensure peer support and the formation of learning networks for future
contact and collaboration
Speakers will include Jenny Kitzinger, Martin Barker, and Tom O’Malley (to
be confirmed). A copy of the CFP can be found at the end of this newsletter.
This event is a must for any postgraduates interested in, or doing,
practical work.
Reflections on Media Practice and Theory
12th May 2007: University of Oxford, in conjunction with Reuters
This event, which is still in its planning stage, is for postgraduates and
early career researchers. It aims to explore the relationship between
‘actual’ experiences of media ‘practice’ and academic ones, an important
practical and political issue for anyone wishing to research or work in media.
Informal workshops will also be organized along three broad spectrums:
- media practice as a research method
- mass media which draws upon media theory or policy
- mass media practice and theory/research as a double vocation
This event is crucial for anyone wishing to understand or study the
political and practical relationships between ‘actual’ and academic media.
Information about these events will be appearing on our website
www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/ shortly.
These events are organized, and executed by postgraduates, and information
about how to plan such an event, along with funding possibilities and how to
get support from the MeCCSA PGN will also be appearing soon on our website.
The MeCCSA PGN would like to encourage and support more of these events for
2007/8 academic year.
The Website
The website is improving all the time. If you have any information about
postgraduate events at your institution or elsewhere, post it on our
website. We are continuing to try and build a database of PhD students and
their theses so that students in similar areas can network. A request will
shortly be sent round asking members of the PGN to update their details, and
of course, this is entirely voluntary.
The Executive Committee
The MeCCSA Postgraduate Executive would also like to take this opportunity
to welcome its newest members and say goodbye to its old ones. As a
postgraduate committee, members come and go as their PhD’s dictate, and it
was very sad to see Vicky Ball and Stephen Cushion leave the executive in
January this year, not only because of their hard work but also because they
conceived the idea and founded the network back in 2004.
The new committee as it stands, and their roles within the network are
outlined below, along with contact details. All this information will soon
be available on the website:
Chair:
Kaitlynn Mendes
Cardiff
mendesk @ cf.ac.uk
Communications:
Salvatore Scifo
Westminster
scifos @ wmin.ac.uk
Iain Smith
Nottingham
arxirs @ nottingham.ac.uk
Main Conference planning:
Helen Thornham
Ulster
thornham-h @ ulster.ac.uk
Einar Thorsen
UWE
[log in to unmask]
Other Events:
Kerstin Leder
Aberystwyth
kll00 @ aber.ac.uk
Cathy Baldwin
Oxford
cathy.baldwin @ sant.ox.ac.uk
Secretary:
Farida Vis
Open University
f.a.vis @ open.ac.uk
Website Address:
www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/
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‘Sharing Experience’
Audiences in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies
A MeCCSA Postgraduate Network symposium at the Department of Theatre, Film
and Television Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
3rd – 4th April 2007
Audiences come in all shapes and forms – as viewers, listeners, readers,
users, participants, fans, aficionados and learners – focusing their
attention on a variety of sources within an increasingly changing media
landscape. The range and diversity of audiences and their experiences is
both exciting and challenging for researchers, and it is the very nature of
the field that requires a multitude of systematic approaches when studying
and teaching about audiences.
This training day aims to bring together postgraduate researchers interested
in the broad field of audience and reception studies, whether this is in
relation to contemporary or historical audiences, theoretical or empirical
work, quantitative or qualitative studies, questions or answers. In addition
to presenting and discussing their work in thematic panels, there will be an
opportunity for delegates to take part in workshops concerned with ‘how to
do’ and ‘how to teach’ audience and reception studies.
Confirmed speakers include Professor Jenny Kitzinger (Cardiff School of
Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies) and Professor Martin Barker
(Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth).
We welcome abstracts of 200 words to be sent to
[log in to unmask] by 1st December 2006. Please also briefly
indicate why you would like to participate in this event, and what you would
hope to get out of it. In particular, we are interested to hear about the
issues of teaching and methodology that might become relevant to you in the
process of your work.
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Salvatore Scifo
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network,
Mailing List Manager
Communication and Media Research Institute
School of Media, Arts & Design
University of Westminster
Watford Road, Northwick Park
Harrow
HA1 3TP
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network
http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn
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