Elena Terranova and Rebecca Young
CMCI Emerging Voices is an annual conference led by PhD students at the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries (CMCI), in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London (KCL). The CMCI conference offers an opportunity for creating stimulating discussions around latest research and practices in the culture, media and creative industries fields. This year the conference celebrates its 6th edition. CMCI Emerging Voices 2019 will be, for the first time, a two-day conference.
The event will take place in Bush House, former headquarters of the BBC World Service (1940-2012) and now part of King’s College London on Thursday, 6th and Friday, 7th June 2019. With the theme of “Beyond Disciplines” this year’s conference celebrates new and emerging directions in the research of culture, media and creative industries that challenge how we understand and see technological, environmental, political, institutional and aesthetic developments that are shaping our cultural landscape. In particular, the conference wants to stimulate a discussion on how current research is contributing to their fields. Whether it is challenging how we think about existing structures, shaping how disciplines intersect through research or revisiting established ideas. The aim of Emerging Voices is to present works that contribute to the research of CMCI in new ways. The conference creates a space in which multi- and interdisciplinary research is produced, discussed and valued.
The programme of CMCI Emerging Voices 2019 includes original empirical and theoretical presentations by both researchers and practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds and with a particular interest in Culture, Media and Creative Industries. 37 local and international speakers will come from all over the world, including Australia, France, USA, India, Philippine, Italy, Spain, Germany, and many others countries, to present their latest works. The presentations will tackle a broad variety of topics, such as articulations of gender, race, class, sexuality, etc. in media, culture and creative industries; audience engagement and participation; collaborative practices across the creative industries; contemporary museum practices; digital culture and everyday life and cultural and social memory. Last, but not least, CMCI Emerging Voices 2019 is delighted to have two keynote speakers with international profiles: Professor Hongwei Bao from The University of Nottingham and Suhair Khan Program Manager of Google Arts & Culture.
Keynote Speakers Profiles:
Professor Hongwei Bao is giving his keynote speech on Thursday, 6th June 2019. Professor Bao is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the University of Nottingham and co-direct the Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies (CEACS). He is also a member of the Institute for Screen Industries Research (ISIR) and Centre for Critical Theory (CCI) at Nottingham. Dr. Hongwei Bao is the author of Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China (2018) and co-editor of Queer/Tongzhi China: Perspectives into Research, Activism and Media Cultures (2015).
He is currently working on a book on queer community media and cultural production in contemporary China. Dr. Hongwei Bao’s work primarily focuses on gay identity, queer activism, independent documentary and alternative media production in contemporary China. The subject of his keynote speech Queer China: Sexuality, Communication, and Culture in the Global South will bring together queer performances, images, and texts, in tandem with urban ethnography, to delve into the emerging queer cultures in urban China in the past two decades to interrogate the politics of being queer in the Global South.
For more information Dr. Hongwei Bao
Suhair Khan, Program Manager at Google Arts & Culture is presenting on June 7th, 2019. Suhair leads on UK Partnerships and projects for Google Arts & Culture. Currently based in London, her work focuses on the nexus of art, culture, storytelling and technology. A long-time Googler, she joined Google in Mountain View before moving to Singapore and then London. She is a graduate of both Cornell University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Suhair grew up between Europe and Asia, and her interests and work have always drawn from an array of cultural and social influences.
She has written extensively over the years on art, fashion, design and culture for publications including Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, and Architectural Digest. Her advisory roles center around social impact, culture and technology. In her keynote speech, Suhair will explore in detail the Google Arts & Culture online platform. Launched in 2011 by Google as part of the Google Cultural Institute this digital platform employs high-resolution image technology as well as Google’s Street View technology to provide visitors two options of exploring the museums and the artwork within. Todays, Google Arts & Culture grants public access to high-resolution images of artworks from the collections of more than 1,800 museums. The platform has helped preserve and share culture and allow curators to create engaging exhibitions online and offline, inside museums.
For more information Suhair Khan
The event is free, but it is necessary to register on EventBrite. Spaces are filling up fast, so remember to register promptly!
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