Cultural and Media Policy Studies News and Events

Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen, Director of the MA Global Media and Communication and Prof Gilson Schwartz of the University of São Paulo, were among 400 applicants from 18 countries to secure funding from FAPESP/British Council Researcher Links 2013. The aim of the fund is to bring UK and Brazil researchers together on cutting edge issues. They will run a 3 day workshop April 22nd-25th 2014, at the University of São Paulo entitled Beyond the Digital - Collective Memory and Social Networks in Emerging Global Conflicts. This will engage 10 UK and 10 Brazilian Early Career Researchers, with a range of UK and Brazil professorial mentors. The workshop will explore innovative areas of media research stemming from the new, contemporary emergence of global and local voices of protest. The main aim is to bring to bear the theme of ‘collective memory and social networks’ upon a growing digital media literacy and emerging global democracy. ECRs will explore how (often closed) organisations, businesses and public spheres are repurposing memory and public feeling using social technologies in the context of real, global conflicts. They will exchange knowledge on digital heritage, memory and archives, the political economy of serious games as well as the historicity of entertainment and ludic ecosystems in cultural and creative industries, social networking and the regulation of online culture. The project complements the Santander funded Iconomy and Memory in UK/Brazil project.

For 2014/15 the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies is launching a new PhD scholarship worth approximately £18,000 per year in the area of 'Culture and Development'. The successful applicant will be able to use the scholarship to cover fees and living costs over the three years of study and may also have opportunities to get involved in teaching on one of the Centre's successful MA programmes. The scholarship is open to both Home / EU and overseas applicants. For further information please click on the link above.

As part of their Creative Business Project module, a team of students from the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises and the MA in Global Media and Communication conducted a project for video production company Ember TV in Birmingham to understand the return on investment and value of online video. It's an elusive concept as the team discovered but, as Ember TV report in their blog, the project was both valuable and enlightening.