RMeS KNIR Course | Media in the (Eternal) City

Date: 27 February (preparatory seminar in Utrecht); 31 March (arrival Rome) – 6 April (departure Rome) 2025
Location: KNIR – Royal Dutch Institute in Rome – Italy
Credits: 6 EC
Lecturers: dr Karin van Es (UU) and prof. Marcel Broersma (RUG)
For: PhD candidates and RMa students, who are a member of RMeS
Registration: See details below.

In collaboration with the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome, RMeS will organize a course on Media in the (Eternal) City. The course consists of a full-day preparatory seminar in Utrecht on February 27 (9.30-16.30h) to discuss literature and practice datawalking and a five day course in Rome (plus two days for arrival and departure). The participants will do a (group) research project in Rome, discuss literature and are expected to write a 2,500 word paper.

Topic
Media are ambiguous in cities, whether we think of billboards and screens in public spaces, people navigating through cities via maps on their smartphones, cinemas and newspaper buildings, surveillance cameras observing crowds, or tourists taking selfies. Cities as material surroundings and social structures are shaped by media and mediated experiences, while media also shape and structure the lives of people in cities, whether they are inhabitants or visitors. In this course we will therefore explore how media, mediated social life and the city – with Rome as a case – constitute one another.

We will discuss how media and cities relate but also explore how we can study media in the city, taking the method of datawalking as a starting point. Datawalks “combine purposive physical walks through the (urban) landscape with being specifically attuned to observe and reflect on the variety of processes and infrastructures of datafication [and mediatization] as situated in time and space” (Van Es and De Lange, 2020). Datawalks will be combined with other ethnographic methods such as interviews, observations and visual ethnography. Students will do their own group projects in Rome to study different aspects of media, mediatization and datafication in the city.

This course offers a unique opportunity to learn and practice ethnographic research on media and cities, but also to do your own group project while in Rome and create connections with fellow PhD and ReMa students.

Location and costs
The participants will stay internally at the KNIR in Rome (https://www.knir.it), located at the edge of the Villa Borghese. All accommodation costs and travel costs up to 250 euro will be covered by RMeS.

Number of participants
a maximum of 10 PhD and RMa students can be admitted.

Assignment
Participants are expected to write a 2,500-word paper

Registration
Please send a brief motivation to rmes[at]rug.nl in which you tell how this course would support your development and how it connects to your research project before 6 January 2025. In case more than 10 students apply, RMeS will select students based on their motivation and fit with the theme of the course.