RMeS Summer School 2025: Media Transformations
When: 25, 26 & 27 June 2025
Where: VU University and Open University
Organizers: Prof. Damian Trilling (VU), Dr Tim van der Heijden (OU), Dr Tim Groot Kormelink (VU), Dr Kenza Lamot (VU), Dr Klaas de Zwaan (VU), Dr Sebastian Scholz (VU), Dr Eline Huiberts (OU), Dr Bregt Lameris (OU), Lesley Verbeek, MA (OU)
For: PhD Candidates and Research master students who are a member of a Dutch Graduate Research School (onderzoekschool). Students who are members of RMeS will have first access.
ECTS: 2 ECTS / 5 ECTS
Registration will open on 17 February 2025 VIA THIS LINK
Register before June 1, 2025. When registering, please specify if you intend to obtain 2 or 5 EC.
—-THE SUMMER SCHOOL IS FULLY BOOKED, please send an e-mail with your with your name, affiliation, status (ReMA, PhD, other) and research school membership to rmes@rug.nl. We will put you on our waiting list.—
Confirmed keynote speakers:
- Professor Andreas Hepp (University of Bremen)
- Dr Sarah-Mai Dang (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
- Laurens Vreekamp (Journalist Villamedia and founder Future Journalism Today)
In today’s rapidly evolving digital societies, media are not only ubiquitous but also increasingly reshaping the ways we communicate, create, and understand the world. From the rise of datafication and generative AI to an increased platformization and participatory news production, the media landscape is undergoing profound transformations. This does not only impact people’s lives, but also challenges us as researchers, who are forced to find ways to navigate a rapidly evolving field. Questions we used to have an answer to seem to be re-opened, and new questions emerge. How can we foster media literacy in an age of algorithmically-curated realities? How can journalism adapt to evolving media consumption habits – and how can we study this? What new possibilities can generative artificial intelligence offer for digital storytelling techniques? But also, how can we tackle the ethical challenges that come with these techniques? And ultimately, how does also the way we do research transform – such as the increasing implementation of principles and practices of Open Science?
This RMeS Summer School on the theme of Media Transformations invites PhD candidates and Research Master students to explore these questions and critically reflect on these media transformations and their societal implications. Through a combination of keynote lectures, interactive workshops, and collaborative activities, participants will engage with leading international scholars and practitioners. The Summer School provides a unique platform for emerging scholars to discuss, critique, and reimagine media’s role in a rapidly changing world, fostering new insights and collaborations. Join us to explore how media transformations are shaping our societies, cultures, and futures!
Reading materials for the keynote lectures and workshops will be distributed beforehand. Participants aiming to earn 5 ECTS credits are encouraged to present their paper ideas during the corresponding workshops. A detailed programme will be accessible in April 2025.
More information will follow soon.
Sarah-Mai Dang
From Archives to Algorithms: Cultural Heritage Metadata and Data Visualizations
What is at stake when we create, process, archive and reuse cultural heritage metadata? How do power dynamics affect data-driven research, and how can digital tools help us to redistribute narrative power and develop more inclusive approaches?
This keynote addresses the role of cultural heritage metadata in film and media historical research. As film and media studies scholars increasingly use machine learning technologies and so-called artifical intelligence, ethical concerns about data provenance, archival silences, and the situatedness of knowledges take on a new urgency. Drawing on intersectional feminism, critical data studies and digital humanities, the talk critically reflects the promises and limitations of metadata-based methods. The focus is on data visualizations and their potential for situating historical narratives, particularly in the context of archival, curatorial, and scholarly data practices. Using case studies from the BMBF-funded research group “Aesthetics of Access: Visualizing Research Data on Women in Film History” (DAVIF), the talk will show how visualizing metadata can both reveal structural inequalities and open up new possibilities for research. Rather than treating data as neutral or objective, visualizations are used to highlight blind spots and absences within metadata collections and challenge dominant narratives. The talk argues for a more reflective and justice-oriented approach to digital research methods. It calls for an understanding of cultural heritage metadata not merely as a tool of preservation, but as a space of political responsibility, epistemological reflection, and transformative potential in media studies and beyond.
Bio
Sarah-Mai Dang is a Film and Media Studies scholar investigating how cultural data shape our understanding of history. Her research and teaching focus on digital film historiography, metadata, feminist theory, open access and open science, and media aesthetics. She is currently leading the BMBF research group “Aesthetics of Access: Visualizing Research Data on Women in Film History” (DAVIF) (2021-2025) at the Institute of Media Studies at Marburg University. Additionally, she founded the international DFG research network “New Directions in Film Historiography: Digital Tools and Methods in Film and Media Studies” (2019-2023). Her work has been shaped by interdisciplinary and international collaborations, including research stays in Ann Arbor, New York, and Zurich. Her publications cover a wide range of topics, including digital knowledge production and power, the impact of datafication on historical narratives, and feminist film analysis. She recently published the co-edited book volume Digital Film Historiography, Concepts, Tools, Practices (with Tim van der Heijden, Christian Gosvig Olesen) (2025, DeGruyter).
