How the years pass. Tonight I begin my sixthfifth run of my module that is currently titled Media, Technology and Society. I realise sixfive(!) runs of a module might not sound like a lot particularly, but this is a module that has evolved significantly through the previous fivefour run throughs. I received it in 2010 … Continue Reading
Archives
Urban media studies: 2015 conference at University of Zagreb
An enticing conference will be taking place this September at the University of Zagreb, organised by Seija Ridell, Simone Tosoni and Zlatan Krajina. Rather sadly, I won’t be able to go as it directly coincides with our undergraduate induction day, which I can’t miss this year. Not only would it have been nice to present … Continue Reading
Stuart Hall film: The Unfinished Conversation
I must have been completely sleeping on this, but a film has been made about Stuart Hall, the Jamaican-born British media and cultural theorist, a key figure in the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, and later, a Professor of Sociology at The Open University (I remember fondly, from my short time there, working in a … Continue Reading
Three new positions in media and cultural studies
I’ve been surprised of late to see a lot more UK academic jobs than the current HE climate would suggest. And now it’s my own department’s turn it seems to enter into the fray. This week, we in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London are inviting applications from outstanding … Continue Reading
New video on the death of the university, English-style
One of the more valuable interventions vis-à-vis the Browne Review (alongside Stefan Collini’s excellent article in the London Review of Books) has been Nick Couldry and Angela McRobbie’s ‘The Death of the University, English Style’. I liked their paper because it is succinct and also has a helpful focus on the implications for media and … Continue Reading
CCR Seminar: the mediated phenomenologies of urban life
Earlier this year I gave a seminar at the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) at the University of Western Sydney, a video of which is now available in the ‘virtual seminars’ section of the CCR website. To access the video you’ll need to navigate through to the clips from 1 July 2010 (there are two … Continue Reading
Intensive media-cultural-urban Amsterdam summer course
For all you undergraduate and master’s students with interests in the intersections of media, cultural and urban studies, note that The University of Amsterdam is sending out a last call for applications for an intensive summer programme running from June 27 – July 10, 2010. The programme on Popular Culture and the City explores media, … Continue Reading
N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich double bill in London
Recently I wrote about an enticing forthcoming conference at Swansea University on The Computational Turn, which, alas, I was unable to attend. Well, good news has arrived for us all in London, and indeed, the South East of England. The two keynotes of that conference – N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich – have been … Continue Reading
Remembering Roger Silverstone
Academic events come and go, and are sometimes quite unremarkable occasions; at their worst, there can be an underlying feeling of ‘going through the motions’. Attending ‘The Work of Roger Silverstone’ at the University of Sussex yesterday, I felt very far from one of those mundane academic gatherings. This was Silverstone encapsulated in a very … Continue Reading
Revisiting the work of Roger Silverstone
Although I’d always been aware of Roger Silverstone’s work in media studies, for some reason, I had managed to virtually ignore him until I came across his last book, Media and Morality. And even then – somewhat embarrassingly – my attention was piqued by the mere fact that the book’s subtitle (on the rise of … Continue Reading