I left Oslo on the 30th of August to have my first day at the Youth & Media Entertainment Group at the University of Amsterdam two days later. Already at the airport, I received a message from Dr Irene van Driel, guiding me through my stay warmly and inclusively. So has the rest of the Department, what a nice and friendly group of people!
The Department of Communication Science is a research department that holds five departments and centers in addition to the Center for Youth and Media Entertainment, where I have now stayed for two months.
The department is placed in the top three floors of a 10-floor building and is organized under the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Roeterseiland campus. The University also has a campus downtown and one outside the city center (University Quarter and Amsterdam Science Park).
During my stay, I have had the pleasure of being involved in the project: See me, Be me, the Power of Media Representation in Media for Youth with Dr. Irene van Driel, Dr. Sindy Sumter, and Dr. Chei Billedo.
The project envisions a national media landscape that offers Dutch children, teens, and young adults authentic and inclusive media representations. The project combines an audience and an industry perspective, looking both at how youth experience representation in media, and how the industry is taking measures to meet their need for representation.
Courses, seminars and reading groups
From the beginning of September until the middle of October, I attended their Master class Representation in the Media, (which is so popular that there is a waiting list). In this class, students get the tools they need to recognize how media is enforcing stereotypes about minorities, possible explanations and solutions to this problem, and a rich overview of relevant research on the subject. The course ended with students presenting suggestions on how the issue of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of minority groups could be handled in front of a panel of experts from the industry.
After having a coffee with Sindy and telling her about my project, I got an email about a reading group for early scholars organized by Global Digital Cultures, Platformization Reading Group for Early Career Scholars, an interdisciplinary research community that analyzes digitization around the globe. From the beginning of October, I have joined these early scholars from different research fields and departments. It has been wonderful to meet others doing research with similar academic issues and hear about their projects, thoughts, ideas, and perspectives, as they come from many different academic fields (Law, Economy, Media, Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy) and from all over the world.
Through the connections at the Global Digital Cultures, I received an email about the seminar Covering Russia’s War on Ukraine: Local Media Professionals and Open-Source Investigators - Fixers and Stringers. In this seminar, I learned about the difficulties and challenges of journalists and researchers working in fields with active and violent conflicts.
Dr Ella McPherson from the University of Cambridge gave an impressive talk on the second day of the seminar. She is researching how new methods and what she calls the “seduction of the quantification versus qualitative data” are affecting research norms. I will encourage readers interested in philosophy and epistemology to check out her work.
I also got to talk to academics and scholars working and living in Ukraine right now. One of them was Dr Dariya Orlova who visited the University of Oslo and the Department for Media and Communication as a young student and is now currently working at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. In addition to being a fun and warm person, we soon discovered that we had similar findings in our research, showing the importance of exchange and travel for researchers.
Hearing about some of the Ukrainian scholars’ personal experiences made an unforgettable impression and is something that will stick with me for a long time.
Final month
As my stay is in its last month, I have a lot to finish and prepare.
- I have had meetings with Irene, Sindy, and Chei, and looked at possibilities for collaboration in the future.
- I am trying to learn as much as possible from the reading group at Global Digital Cultures, while at the same time preparing for the Midway seminar that is set for the 12th of December at the University of Oslo.
- I am also preparing for a guest lecture 30th of November in the Cutting-edge Communication Research @ ASCoR series, so please come to this event if you are passing by the University of Amsterdam at the Roeterseilandcampus (I have heard that there will be free drinks and snack after the Q&A part).
I hope this letter can be helpful and maybe a little inspiring as well. I wish you all a cozy and wonderful pre-December/Christmas (November),
All the best, Edda
