RMeS Kick-Off Event: Inclusivity in Media Research

When: 11 October 2024
Time: 15.00-17.00, followed by drinks
Where: Utrecht University – Janskerkhof 2-3, room 021
For: RMa and PhD students in the field of Media Studies, with a focus on inclusivity.

Registration via THIS LINK.

Guest speakers: Dr Çiğdem Bozdağ (RUG) and Dr Bregt Lameris (OU)

Join us as we kick off the new academic year with an engaging roundtable discussion on Inclusivity in Media Research. This event will bring together experts to explore the challenges and opportunities in promoting inclusivity within the media research landscape. Through open dialogue, participants will have the chance to exchange ideas, share insights, and collaborate on fostering a more inclusive research environment.

15:00 – 15.15 Walk-in
15:15 – 15:30 Opening announcements by Marcel Broersma
15:30 – 16:15 Invited talks + Q&A
16:15 – 16:30 BREAK
16:30 – 17:15 Roundtable discussion with speakers and audience
17:15 – end DRINKS

Information talks:

Multilingualism in media use – multilingualism in research processes. Insights from a participatory action research in a secondary school in Germany by dr. Çiğdem Bozdağ

Young people´s media repertoires are increasingly multilingual given the possibilities of digital media for switching and choosing between different languages while using media. This talk will discuss the research project INCLUDED (MSCA, University of Bremen, 2019-2023) that took place in a secondary school that is based in a socioeconomically disadvantaged and culturally diverse neighborhood in Bremen, Germany. The project is a participatory action research that adopts methods from ethnographic research including observations, focus groups and interviews. The talk will present how multilingual media repertoires of young people in diverse societies are shaped by multilingualism and discuss what factors are influencing their choices of particular languages during media use. These factors include the social connections, linguistic identities and language ideologies. Based on these insights, the talk will discuss how media education and media research can and should become more language-aware in order to be more inclusive. 

Disability Media Studies. “Doing Research Together” by dr. Bregt Lameris

Two years ago, during a two-day meeting, lived-experience researcher Mark Koning gave a workshop called “Doing Research Together” for a transdisciplinary team of psychologists, computer scientists, media and disability scholars working on representing People with Intellectual Disabilities (PWID). He introduced inclusive research as a serious methodology and raised the awareness that working inclusively is and should be imperative for everybody who wishes to apply to Disability Media Studies.  

Inclusive research is gaining more ground, catalysed by the call for inclusion of Persons with Disabilities by the UN (2006). It is informed by the disability studies’ adage ‘nothing about us, without us’ and aims for epistemic justice (Fricker). In the field of research, the voices of people with disabilities are too seldom heard. The added value of an inclusive approach is in the quality of a) the research process and b) the outcomes, in ‘bringing something unique’ (Walsmley et al., 2018, p. 751). With an inclusive research design, knowledge that ‘abled’ researchers cannot access by themselves will be produced.

In this talk, dr. Lameris will present her first experiences working towards and reflecting upon these attempts to work inclusively in Disability Media Studies.

Speaker info: 

Dr. Çiğdem Bozdağ is an associate professor at the Research Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. She is the principal investigator of the NWO Vidi project DigiMig (2024-2028, University of Groningen), which consists of three sub-projects focusing on digital inclusion and migration, specifically in the contexts of families, policies, and education. Previously, Dr. Bozdağ held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship in the Faculty of Education at the University of Bremen, where she led the INCLUDED project (2019-2023). She also served as an assistant and associate professor and head of the New Media department at Kadir Has University and was part of the Mercator-IPC Fellowship Programme at the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabanci University. Dr. Bozdağ completed her Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies in January 2013 at the University of Bremen. Her research interests include media and migration, digital media use, digital literacy, digital inclusion, and media education in schools. 

Dr. Bregt Lameris is working as a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the Open Universiteit in The Netherlands. In 2023, she successfully finished her habilitation in Film and Media Studies at the University of Zurich. Her research interests include colour in media, media archaeology, film archiving, film historiography, affect, emotions and subjectivity, media and mental health, and disability media studies. In 2017, she published her first monograph, Film Museum Practice and Film Historiography. The Case of the Nederlands Filmmuseum (1946-2000), which is available in Open Access through Amsterdam University Press. Her second monograph, Feeling Colour. Chromatic Embodiment in Film Culture (1950s-1960s) will be published in Diamond Open Access by Open Book Publishers this November. 

Please register through the link above no later than 4 October 2024. For questions of any kind, please contact us via RMeS@rug.nl.

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

The RMeS PhD council
(Bjorn, Dennis, Maud, Sanna, Natalia)