The Netherlands Research school for Media Studies (RMeS) is a national network of academic experts in media research. It is organized to advance knowledge on media and to educate young scholars, both PhD candidates and promising RMa students, in classical and cutting edge theories and methodologies in media studies, and to offer them an opportunity to start building a network.
9 December 2024 | Utrecht University
This session of the 2024 Digital Ethnography Research Series at Utrecht University brings together two world-leading researchers using ethnographic approaches to study AI, Futures, and Work. Their methods and projects are diverse, including studying AI industries using ethnographic sensibilities, analyzing how the construction of AI is being rhetorically framed, bringing attention to global south perspectives, exploring the sociotechnical interplay in development of AI, researching how language models and deployment frameworks can be more inclusive, and understanding how AI is being localized in specific companies.
13 December 2024 | Leiden University
Extended Reality (XR) technologies are reshaping our interactions with digital media, demanding new ways of thinking about perception, embodiment, and sensory engagement. This symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers, artists, and scholars to examine how XR technologies activate gesture, movement, and attention in unique ways. We will explore how these immersive experiences engage our bodies in new perceptual frameworks, facilitating a nuanced understanding of XR’s physiological and experiential impact on users. By focusing on Gesture, Movement, and Attention, we will delve into how XR tools and narratives guide our sensory interpretations, exploring both intentional and spontaneous movements within XR media. This event will encourage cross-disciplinary conversations, linking insights from art, media, psychology, and digital technology.
15 November 2024 | University of Amsterdam
In today’s world of rapid technological change and increasing polarization, humanities skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving have never been more essential. As we seek to translate our value as researchers working across media and cultural studies into broader societal debates, it becomes crucial to reflect on how we actually define and practice these skills within our disciplines. What value do we truly bring with our research? What values are embedded within our own work, and how do these values clash or align with those in other fields, industries, and sectors?
This event is designed to help young researchers, particularly PhDs and RMas, reflect on their role both in society and within the academic community. We will address the question of how to effectively engage with contemporary issues and foster societal change from a humanities-based perspective.
22–28 January 2025 | TU Eindhoven
‘I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing. Not for AI to do my art and writing, so that I can do my laundry and dishes’ (Joanna Maciejewska, 2024).
This widely circulated quote captures growing unease about the potential displacement of human intellectual labour and creativity by AI. With the rapid deployment of generative AI in the arts, many creative professionals worry that this technology will be especially disruptive for the creative industries (film, plastic arts, new media), as well as for how we reward creativity in education and academic research. Simply put, generative AI is showing signs that it can perform a wide variety of creative tasks, often with speed, accuracy, and alacrity. This creates a problem because many still see creativity as a key capacity of human beings, equally as distinctive as rationality or the capacity for political participation
25 November 2024 | University of Amsterdam
Since its inception in the 1950s, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been nurtured by the dream that it will lead to forms of consciousness and intelligence similar or alternative to human life. Yet, AI might be more accurately described as a range of technologies providing a convincing illusion of intelligence – in other words, not much the creation of intelligent beings, but rather of technologies that are perceived by humans as such.
How are media keeping us busy these days?
In this podcast series the RMeS PhD council interviews media doctors that either work in or outside academia.
The RMeS PhD council welcomes RMa students, PhD students and post docs in media studies to join the RMeS Grad Students Discord server!
RMeS Winter School & Graduate Symposium 2024-25
/in RMeS News /by Chantal29 & 30 January 2025 | Maastricht University
Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Lauren Klein (Emory University)
The RMeS winter school offers PhD candidates the opportunity to present their current work, and receive feedback from their peers and senior scholars. Presentations can be on any topic students are working on and would like to get feedback on, ranging from chapter and article drafts to research proposals. Students will as much as possible be matched with reviewers that have expertise on their topic.