Post-event Interviews of the Collaborative Project “I, Human: Becoming Visible”
King’s College London, in collaboration with the City University of London, conceived and designed the “I, Human: Becoming Visible” (IHBV) project to respond to anti-Asian racism that has seen a surge since Covid-19. In November 2022, students from KCL and City, together with the members of East Asian and Southeast Asian (ESEA) communities, took part…
‘Museums, Class and the Pandemic’ report launch: An interview with Dr Serena Iervolino
Dr Serena Iervolino launched the research report entitled “Museums, Class and the Pandemic: An Investigation into the Lived Experiences of Working Class Londoners” at a hybrid panel discussion held at the Museum of London Docklands on January 11, 2023. She co-authored the publication with Dr Domenico Sergi, Senior Curator (Curating London) at the Museum of…
Asian Cultural Policy Seminar Series
From 2020 to 2022, Professor Hye-Kyung Lee, Karin Chau and Takao Terui organised Asian Cultural Policy Seminar series ten times. In these seminar events, speakers from various institutions (Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand) were invited to present their research findings and have a vibrant discussion with participants. The…
New article on skills and resources for craft graduates
Dr Lauren England, Lecturer in Creative Economies in CMCI, has published an article “Crafting professionals: Skills and resources for graduates entering the craft economy” in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. The article is part of a special issue on Craft Economies and Inequalities, edited by Dr Karen Patel and Rajinder Dudrah, and is available open access. The article…
PhD Toolkit: Research-led Filmmaking Workshop for students at the Paul Mellon Centre
Estrella Sendra On Monday 21 November, Estrella Sendra (King’s College London) and Lily Ford (University of Pittsburgh and Derek Jarman Lab, Birkbek) were invited by the Doctoral Researchers Network of the Paul Mellon Centre (Yale University) to deliver a workshop on filmmaking as research. The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is an…
Estrella Sendra participates in ‘African cinema and cinephilia’ at the Leeds International Film Festival
Estrella Sendra CMCI Lecturer Estrella Sendra has recently participated in a panel discussion on ‘African Cinema and Cinephilia’ at the Leeds International Film Festival, hosted between 3-17 November 2022 in Leeds. The panel discussion was part of ‘New Voices in Cinephilia’, an event series led by Dr Rachel Johnson and Prof Stephanie Dennison (University of…
Special Issue ‘Musicology on Screen’ just published on Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media
Estrella Sendra I am delighted to share with you that the special issue ‘Musicology on Screen’, which I have had the pleasure to co-edit with guest editors Prof Barley Norton (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Joseph Owen Jackson (SOAS and Institute of Civil Engineering) has just been published in Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication…
APPG for Creative Diversity new project announced
APPG for Creative Diversity announces next research project examining diversity and inclusion in the talent pipeline with partners including YouTube and King’s College London The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Creative Diversity today announces its next research project examining creative education and ‘What Works’ to support diversity in the talent pipeline. In September 2021, the…
Busy bodies: the afterlives of photographic motion studies in contemporary visual culture
Dr Sara Callahan It is sometimes said that more images are now produced every minute than were made during the entire nineteenth century. Although I can’t vouch for the veracity of this statement, it is clear that contemporary culture is characterised by the production, reproduction and circulation of images and that many images that originated…
From Humanities to Advertising: An interview with Francesco Mastroviti
This week’s interview is with CMCI Alumni Francesco Mastroviti, the Global Brand lead for Alfa Romeo at Starcom. In this interview, he discusses his current job role, the challenges he has faced during his career and how his education and his time at King’s College London have supported his success. by Kirsty Warner Francesco Mastroviti…
A Reflection by Matthew Dorabiala
by Kirsty Warner This week’s reflection is by CMCI Alumni Matthew Dorabiala, the Founder at Salonexit and Head Conservator and Stock Manager at Pax Romana Gallery and Auction. In this piece he discusses his career journey, discusses the concept behind Salonexit, and the challenges of establishing your own company. Matthew Dorabiala is an artist and…
Confronting Crisis
Lindsay Parker The inaugural Arts and Humanities Festival of Research took place from 19-20 May 2022, tackling the theme of “Confronting crisis: Arts & Humanities perspectives on a changing world”. Papers from the departments of History, European and International Studies and Digital Humanities amongst others were presented. The research panels prompted lively discussion and debate…
Returning the Parthenon Marbles: A Conversation with Baroness Chakrabarti
by Kirsty Warner The question ‘should the UK return colonial artefacts?’ has been a consistent and widely debated topic. However, with large institutions such as the Ethnological Museum, Berlin and the Smithsonian Institution returning objects, there has been a growing pressure for western museums to return colonial objects accessioned to their collections. One of the…
New report published highlighting possible futures for creative work after Covid-19
Dr Lauren England & Dr Roberta Comunian We are delighted to announce that the report “Creative Work: Possible futures after Covid-19” now been published and is available to download for free. The report, co-authored with Dr Federica Viganó (Free University of Bolzano, Italy) and Dr Jessica Tanghetti (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), shines light further onto how the…
Sharing research on craft higher education and professional development at the Crafts Council UK Roundtable
Dr Lauren England On 9th March 2022, I shared key findings from my PhD research on craft higher education and professional development at a Crafts Council UK Higher Education Roundtable. The Roundtable event was attended by members of the Crafts Council’s Education, Policy and Research and Professional Development teams, representatives UK craft higher education and…
New article in Narrative Inquiry on Sharing ‘memories’ on Instagram
Taylor Annabell I am delighted that my article, ‘Sharing ‘memories’ on Instagram: A narrative approach to the performance of remembered experience by young women online’ has been published in Narrative Inquiry. This article considers how sharing that takes place in-the-moment on Instagram involves the performance of remembered experience. Although the platform pushes us to share…
CMCI staff and Arts & Cultural Management MA student Bayo Omoboriowo collaborate on exhibition “Intertwined: Fashion, Textile and Heritage in Nigeria”
In 2019 Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England (Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, KCL) started working with Dr Eka Ikpe (African Leadership Centre, KCL) and Dr Ananya Kabir (Department of English, KCL). They were awarded a King’s Together Seed Fund grant for the “Africa Fashion Futures” project. The project looks at fashion…
Online Interviewing Tips for Researchers
Nina Vindum Rasmussen The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the need to carry out qualitative interviews online. In my PhD project, I’ve used both in-person and online interviews. I’ve been surprised to learn that online interviews can produce equally rich and sometimes superior data. They can be cost-effective, convenient, and quick. But there are also specific…
What are cultural and creative ecosystems and how can they be studied? CMCI researchers provide a review of theories and methods, towards a new research agenda in international journal Cultural Trends
Manfredi de Bernard Recently, we have witnessed a wave of enthusiasm from scholars towards the creative and cultural ecology paradigm as a new promising model for policy development. Indeed, in his popular 2015 report, Holden argues for a shift toward “the cultural ecology” to address the criticalities of existing top-down approaches. He highlights the inextricable…
It is encouraging to see more mentions of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the creative economies, and social investment
Denderah Rickmers 2021 marks the decade of action for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Notably, it is also the UN’s International Year of the Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. In fact, the SDGs are the first international development framework that explicitly refers to culture, as many countries have begun to view culture as an asset in eliminating poverty, responding…
New article published on MCS Journal: Responses to health risk and suffering: ‘China’ in the Italian media discourses during the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic
Maria Paola Pofi I am delighted to announce that the article I wrote with my supervisor Dr Wing-Fai Leung has been published in the Media, Culture & Society (MCS) Journal and is available to download for free here (link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437211053770). The opportunity to start this research project arose during my PhD fieldwork in Rome (in February 2020),…
AHRC Award for African Hub for Sustainable Creative Economies
Dr Roberta Comunian & Dr Lauren England We are delighted to announce that Dr Roberta Comunian (CMCI, KCL), Dr Lauren England (CMCI, KCL) and Dr Brian Hracs (University of Southampton) have been awarded an AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement grant to develop an African Hub for Sustainable Creative Economies. They will be working in partnership with…
New Report on Dundee’s Cultural Recovery
Dr Lauren England Dr Lauren England is delighted to announce that the final report from her research project “Dundee Cultural Recovery” has now been published and is available to download for free. The report provides insights into the impact of the pandemic on the organisations and individual cultural workers (specifically freelancers) who make up Dundee’s cultural economy and the role…
Who has the right to claim authorship when we talk about artisan production?
Jazmín Ruiz Díaz (Photos courtesy of the IPA) News related to traditional handicrafts does not usually hit the headlines in Paraguayan newspapers. However, this time was different. The reason: A dispute between an association of women potters against an entrepreneur from the capital city. The accusations were cultural appropriation from one side, and of breaking…
New Chapter: Fandom: Historicized Fandom and the Conversation between East and West Perspectives
Erika Ningxin Wang The chapter I have co-authored with Dr Eleonora Benecchi, Università della Svizzera Italiana, discusses the transformation of the concept of “Fandom” before and after the digital age, and the conversation between East and West. It is included in the book Digital Roots: Historicizing Media and Communication Concepts of the Digital Age, part…
Creative Work: Possible Futures After Covid-19 Workshop
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England in partnership with Dr Federica Viganò from the Faculty of Education of University of Bolzen have organised an international online workshop ‘Creative Work: Possible Futures After Covid-19’. The workshop will include 14 papers presented over two days (4th – 5th November 2021), with contributions from across Europe, the USA and South…
The Covid-19 crisis and ‘critical juncture’ in cultural policy: a comparative analysis of cultural policy responses in South Korea, Japan and China
Karin Ling-Fung Chau The Covid-19 pandemic has rendered the arts and culture sectors everywhere extremely vulnerable and put cultural policy under a serious common pressure. Seeing the pandemic as a significant event that has disrupted the existing institutions and discourses, many commentators are demanding a reshaping of cultural policy to cope with the crisis and…
An Invitation to Translate
Dr Ricarda Vidal How do you translate a poem into a film, how do you render a soundscape in words, what will this look like when it is turned back into a poem? How could it be performed? I’d like to invite you to listen, watch and read the example below – and as you…
Future Festivals South Africa
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Jonathan Gross We are leading on a one-year project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Future Festivals South Africa: Possibilities for the Age of Covid-19 is an international collaborative project developed in collaboration with Prof Jen Snowball, Delon Tarendaal and Fiona Drummond at Rhodes University (South Africa). It aims…
Supporting the cultural industries using venture capital: a policy experiment from South Korea
Dr Hye-Kyung Lee On 24 March 2021, I gave a talk “Supporting the cultural industries using venture capital: a policy experiment from South Korea” in the CMCI staff seminar. The talk was based on the findings of my fieldwork in Seoul in 2019, and my paper with the same title is currently being reviewed by a journal. The…
Racism as a Virus: Creative and Collective Responses to Sinophobia and Racist Discourses
Dr. Wing-Fai Leung The global coronavirus transmission has made the world a volatile place. Racist hate crimes against Chinese, East Asian and Southeast Asian descents in North America and the UK have surged. Singaporean student Jonathan Mok was beaten by a group of youths on Oxford Street, London, in February 2020, which symbolised the rising…
Exploring multiple nightlife
Jiawei Zhao The question “what is the night?” was common for asking the time in early Modern England; it is now worth questioning again to understand how people perceive the night and their nightlife when we witness more people spend their night differently. By definition, the night is the period from sunset to sunrise when it is dark outside and…
Fan Studies Research Seminar at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU)
Erika Ningxin Wang I was invited as a guest speaker at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), the Chinese campus of the University of Liverpool, to give a talk entitled “Resistance or Negotiation? The Relationship between Chinese Fan Culture and the Mainstream Power Discourse”. On Friday, 2nd April 2021, Professor Marco Pellitteri chaired the seminar in School…
Why Queer Fashion is important
Veronica Gargallo Llamas When I tell people that I am doing my research on the topic of ‘queer fashion’ they mostly respond by saying that it sounds interesting or ‘cool’ but not necessarily knowing what it means exactly. I don’t blame them, even researching the subject myself sometimes I struggle to pinpoint an exact concrete…
What does it mean to be sustainable?
Lindsay Parker When asked what my PhD topis is, my usual response is “fashion and sustainability”. These are terms that are recognisable and used frequently however, their precise definitions (particularly when used within an academic context) are complex and contested. Part of my research is concerned with how different people give meaning to these terms…
Care and co-creation – CMCI students explore the civic role of arts
The past year has been a challenging one, with COVID-19 uprooting our lives but also sparking thoughts and desires about how we might want to reset the way we want to live and how communities operate. As we slowly emerge into whatever might be the ‘new normal’, arts organisations are helping to shape the future:…
Care Manifesto
Manfredi de Bernard and Takao Terui The Care Manifesto stresses the need for and elaborates on an alternative to the neoliberal principles that regulate both our personal and shared existence. Informed by feminist, antiracist and eco-socialist theories, the authors argue for a radical change in the current understandings of human life, individualist and productivity. They…
Oral evidence: The future of Public Service Broadcasting
On Tuesday 17th November 2020, CMCI Professor Jeanette Steemers offered oral evidence to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee for its inquiry on the future of public service broadcasting. In a panel together with Dr Caitriona Noonan, Senior Lecturer, Media and Communication in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies…
Why should we care about stored museum collections?
Dr Anna Woodham People are often surprised to discover that behind the scenes in museum storerooms across the globe, there are millions of objects that will never go on public display. Many of these objects are duplicates, ‘bulk’ collections, such as archaeological finds, or objects which could be described as “uncharismatic”. There are also objects…
Five tips for producing a short academic video
Nina Vindum Rasmussen Universities all over the world are scrapping face-to-face lectures and pivoting toward audiovisual delivery of events and conferences. What tools and skills are required to create video content that transcends the Zoom aesthetic we have grown so accustomed to? In this essay, I want to share five practical tips I have picked…
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Ut[app]ías del deseo: An artistic project on utopias, desire and dating apps
Jazmín Ruiz Díaz In the face of the pandemic, there is no need to overexplain that as a PhD student, I needed to find the right mechanisms to cope with anxiety, uncertainty and a severe case of writer’s block after the lockdown started in the UK, while my home country, Paraguay, took a much strict…
Remembering life using social media during pandemic times
Taylor Annabell Like many in the CMCI academic community, my research has adapted and responded to the unfolding social environment brought about by Covid-19. In fact, entering lockdown in the UK on the 23rd March 2020 was the midway point for me in my fieldwork interviews. My PhD looks at how memory is entangled in…
Besides the Screen 2020 Online Festival
Dr Virginia Crisp 2020 was supposed to be a big year for the network I co-founded with Dr Gabriel Menotti, Besides the Screen. To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the network, we had events planned in Brazil, China, Portugal, Italy, Germany and the UK throughout the year. We were also looking forward to the publication…
A PhD Overview in Three Acts: Cauldrons, Super Bowls and Export-grade Joy
Dr Camilo Solinti Soler Caicedo On January 11th, 2020, on a final wrap-up fieldwork visit, I was approached by a hip-hop dancer, who had seemingly heard of my research on salsa: “Brayan: They told me you are doing a research to find out why the best dancers always come from the ghettoCamilo: You could say……
The Asian Cultural Policy Research Seminar Series
Takao Teuri Dr Hye-Kyung Lee (CMCI), Karin Chau (CMCI), and I (Takao Terui, CMCI) launched a new seminar series titled Asian Cultural Policy Research Seminar Series (ACPRSS). This series aims to broaden our understandings about the cultural and creative industries /cultural policy and to contribute to de-Westernising this field and de-colonising our curriculum, by sharing voices…
Creative Economy Research Frontiers Seminar Series – Creative Work and Gender: Barriers and Activism
Dr Tamsyn Dent & Dr Kate McMillan Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Kate McMillan both presented research as part of the Creative Economy Research Frontiers Seminar Series, organised and hosted by CMCI and DISCE.EU in partnership with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC), Nesta. The event, Creative Work and Gender: Barriers and Activism…
Creative and cultural work without filters: Covid-19 and exposed precarity in the creative economy
Dr Roberta Comunian and Dr Lauren England In the first of our DISCE Webinars Dr Roberta Comunian, DISCE researcher, presented some of her work (with colleague Dr Lauren England at King’s College London) on the impact of Covid-19 on creative and cultural workers. The review article “Creative and cultural work without filters: Covid-19 and exposed precarity…
Emotionally Demanding Research in Lockdown
Lauren Cantillon One definition of ‘emotionally demanding research’ is ‘research that demands a tremendous amount of mental, emotional, or physical energy and potentially affects or depletes the researcher’s health or well-being’ (Kumar and Cavallaro, 2017, p.648). There is an ever-growing literature on how to protect the mental wellbeing of a researcher or research team when…
Children who are well informed are less worried – A study in 42 countries on “Children, Media, and COVID-19”
Professor Jeanette Steemers Together with Cardiff University, CMCI administered the UK component of a worldwide survey of 4,322 children aged between 9 and 13 in 42 countries. 289 UK children took part in the survey over a period of 10 days from 16-26 April, the second-highest number after Belgium, also a country that has experienced…
“Social Enterprises, Social Innovation and the Creative Economy” – Special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal
Dr Roberta Comunian and Denderah Rickmers The creative economy is dead – long live the creative-social economies CMCI staff are involved in the launch of a new special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal on the creative-social economies. Dr Roberta Comunian and PhD Denderah Rickermers have curated the special issue and written the editorial (with…
Creative Higher Education and the impact of Covid-19
Dr Roberta Comunian, Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Lauren England Dr Roberta Comunian, Dr Tamsyn Dent and Dr Lauren England have launched this week a new website and research project – in collaboration with the H2020 funded project DISCE (Developing Inclusive and Sustainable Creative Economies). The project entitled ‘Creative Higher Education and the impact of…
Facebook as Focus Group Tool
Katrin Schindel Faced with the impossibility of conducting research in person due to the current pandemic, many researchers find themselves looking for alternative online methods. This often poses new practical and ethical considerations, with some academics trying out online research they might not have encountered yet. Since my PhD project has been designed as an…
Lockdown Fashion: An exploration of dressing at home in 2020
Yana Reynolds As a fashion sociologist, I have always been fascinated by everyday sartorial behaviours as a mechanism that allows to ‘articulate the relationship between a particular body and its lived milieu, the space occupied by bodies and constituted by bodily actions’, as fashion theorist Jennifer Craik put it. But what happens to dress in…
Gigabitesback – CMCI community – sharing resilience
CMCI Gigabites team At a time like this, our first thoughts are for everyone’s health and wellbeing. We are a community of students, staff and alumni drawn from many parts of the world, and our experiences of the current crisis will take many forms depending on our own circumstances and current conditions of ’social distancing’…
The Birth of the Creative Industries Revisited
Dr Jonathan Gross CMCI began life in 2002 as an MA in Cultural & Creative Industries. This led in 2007 to the launch of the Centre for Culture, Media & Creative Industries, becoming a ‘Department’ in 2010. We now welcome students from all over the world to our three MA programmes (and soon to our…
Shaping digital methodologies and ethics at Humboldt University’s MeDiA Lab
Fabian Broeker As part of my PhD research, I am currently carrying out a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin, focusing on the intersection between technology, culture, and the mythology of the city among dating app users. Professor Christoph Bareither graciously agreed to supervise me during this year as a visiting PhD researcher at Humboldt…
East Asian Popular Culture as a Disruptor 2020 Symposium Report
Liang Ge The East Asian Popular Culture as a Disruptor Symposium was successfully held at King’s College London on 6th March 2020 attended by 15 PhD students and early career researchers across the UK. As the initiator and organiser of this symposium, I would like to, first of all, express my sincere thanks to all…
The Lost Girl – practice as research
Dr Kate McMillan In a recent public lecture, the well-known curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud declared that when he has questions, he makes an exhibition, and when he has answers he writes a book. This statement really resonated for me, as both an artist and a writer on art. During the course of my…
Practising Hope in the Netherlands
Dr Jonathan Gross Just three days after the UK left the European Union I travelled to Nijmegen in the eastern Netherlands. I was there to visit the HAN University of Applied Sciences, which holds an annual International Week. This is the opportunity for students to attend workshops offered by academics from across Europe and beyond. I…
Understanding contemporary Chinese national identity formation through Taiwan
Andong Li Scholarship of nationalism studies has been trying hard to respond to the paradox that nationalist sentiment sharply surges in many countries while the world is becoming more digitalised and globalised. It seems to be increasingly obvious that the cosmopolitan promise of globalisation and digitisation has failed, and cross-Strait (Chinese mainland-Taiwan) relations might be…
Curating expertise: Towards an Interdisciplinary Museums Studies Research Agenda at KCL
Dr Serena Iervolino and Dr Stuart Dunn There has recently been much interest and attention within King’s College London to the field of museum studies. This is hardly surprising: the university sits within one of the richest and most diverse cultural cities in the world, surrounded by gems such as the British Museum, the National…
The ‘Migration Crisis’ in Italy: a Crisis of Identity?
Maria Paola Pofi My PhD research project aims at investigating the phenomena of human mobility (migration) and mediated mobility (mediation) across national borders through a study of migrant transnational lives in Italy. In particular, placing the research within the context of the ‘migration crisis’ – and the conflicts over cultural diversity it triggered – has…
Response to Ofcom Consultation on BBC Children’s news and first-run UK originations and the BBC’s request to change its Operating Licence
Due to significant changes in children’s viewing habits, the BBC requested that Ofcom change its operating licence to implement changes to its children’s news bulletin Newsround, and the Corporation’s quota of original productions for children. In November 2019, Ofcom opened a consultation on the BBC’s plans inviting other interested parties to comment. This piece is…
Industry and Academia Meet in Edinburgh to Discuss AI-Driven Creativity
Nina Vindum Rasmussen The hype is real: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is truly having a moment. The broad term refers to devices designed to act intelligently by mimicking the cognitive functions of the human brain. Advances in AI are disrupting major industries, including the creative sector. News headlines chronicle how AI and machine learning are aiding…
Chile: Doing research in times of social change
Catalina Urtubia Figueroa Just two months ago, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera stated in a televised interview that Chile was “an oasis in Latin America”, referring to its stable democracy and growing economy. On October 18th, it became evident that Chile was more likely to be a mirage when mass protests kicked off in Santiago due…
#KuñaJesareko: Instagram as a place for the female gaze
Jazmín Ruiz Díaz I have recently had the opportunity of presenting my book chapter The Female Gaze in Times of Selfies as a member of the Feminist & Gender Research Reading Group at King’s/Queen Mary (Liss DTP). This chapter — part of the book Amalgama: Women, Identity & Diaspora— represents the culmination of what started…
Understanding And Supporting Creative Economies In Africa Conference
Sana Kim and Manfredi De Bernard On the 14thof November CMCI department hosted Understanding and Supporting Creative Economies In Africa, a one day international conference, which served as a closing event of the AHRC funded research network Understanding And Supporting Creative Economies In Africa: Education, Networks And Policyled by Dr Roberta Comunian (King’s College London)…
China on the Move and the Children Left Behind
Xiaoying Han My research interest in children’s media grew out of my time studying for a master’s degree in journalism. I came across an online forum called ‘Left-behind Children Bar’, the members of which were mainly left-behind children in China. Many of them posted about their hatred towards their parents and their feelings of abandonment.…
Reconceptualising the Public-Private Partnership in Cultural Policy: The Insights from the Historical Research of UK Film Policy
Takao Terui To fully understand the culture, media and creative industries, the public policy for them is a fundamentally essential issue. That’s why I have been exploring cultural policy as my doctoral research theme. I began to be particularly intrigued by the practices and history of UK cultural policy since I moved to Coventry and…
The new activist museum agenda: an interview with Dr Red Chidgey
Protest has become a popular topic of interest in the national arts and heritage sector. In the past year alone, The British Museum hosted I object, an exhibition dedicated to protest objects running from graffiti on a Babylonian brick to a recent anti-Trump Pussyhat. The Imperial War Museum celebrated peace activism in People Power, and…
Media education in the age of digital capitalism
Professor David Buckingham Readers of this site would probably agree that all of us need to study and learn about contemporary media – and that includes children. Teaching about media in schools is by no means a new development: in the UK, it can be traced back to the 1930s, both as part of English…
The co-created museum: art institutions’ search for new roles and relevance
Stella Toonen When visiting museums as a child I was always fascinated by the exotic stories from far away countries or the extraordinary ideas coming from the creative minds of the featured artists. When I grew up, that fascination transformed into wanting to find out where those stories and ideas came from, and especially who…
Intersemiotic Journeys between Practice and Theory
Dr Ricarda Vidal Can we translate between poetry and dance, between painting and music, between scent and performance in the same way as we translate between French and English in literary translation? How would such a translation differ from response, adaptation or illustration? And what might we find out about communication if we tried to…
A Window into South Africa through Reality TV and Social Media
Addiel Dzinoreva In 1994 South Africa finally ended apartheid and a new country led by Nelson Mandela was born, carrying the hopes and dreams of previously disenfranchised black people. For black people in the media and creative industries, and hopeful storytellers like myself, there was great excitement about the opportunities the new dispensation provided for…
Researching Media, Gender, and Sexuality in East Asia
Dr Eva Cheuk-Yin Li Broadly speaking, my academic and teaching interests focus on two inter-related areas. Firstly, East Asian media and culture. Secondly, gender and sexuality through the lens of the multi-directional flows of transnational and regional popular culture, audience participation (or non-participation), and everyday practices. I am interested in understanding the interplay between media…
Museums in Arabia Conference: An Intercultural Dialogue through Museum Practice
Miruna Mirica-Damian At the end of June, King’s College London hosted the Museums in Arabia conference, a thought-provoking event that united scholars and practitioners interested in the development of the cultural sector in the Arabic Peninsula. The interesting mix of ideas emerging either from academic research or from work experience created the feeling of an…
Un-Governing the Neoliberal Subject: Humanities in the Service of Cultural Criticism
Jessica Davis Under the influence of neoliberal tendencies, knowledge generation within academia is increasingly focused on heightened productivity, metric performance, and enhanced competitiveness. Within this context, the university has been characterized by its recalibration through a new market logic (De Angelis and Harvie, 2009). Demonstrable in this regard is the reconfiguration of higher education as…
Trans-Disciplinary Fieldwork and Post-Fieldwork at CMCI
Camilo Sol Inti Soler Caicedo When I mention that I do research on dance, I am always pleased to see faces of interest, curiosity and intrigue. What is even more enthralling for me, and seemingly for those who listen to my doctoral accounts until the end, is the diversity of approaches I used during fieldwork…
Investigating Cosmic Wellness
Dr Bridget Conor On 19th November 2017, a new Instagram post appeared on the official goop Instagram feed, a 30 second video announcing: ‘The wait is over. GOOPGLOW is here 👏. A power shot of 6 potent antioxidants in one tiny package. Simply mix the powder with water, stir and #bottomsup (it’s delicious p.s.).’ The…
Creative emerging economies: Fieldwork in Lagos
Dr Roberta Comunian and Lauren England In April 2019 we undertook an intensive week of fieldwork in Lagos (Nigeria) as part of an AHRC funded research network “Understanding and Supporting Creative Economies in Africa: Education, Networks And Policy”. In line with the Highlight Notice and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to…
CMCI Emerging Voices Conference 2019
Lauren Cantillon On Thursday 6th and Friday 7th June, the CMCI department was delighted to welcome over 100 speakers and delegates from around the world to our annual postgraduate conference, CMCI Emerging Voices. Held in Bush House, this year’s conference theme was ‘Beyond Disciplines’ – chosen by the organising committee to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of…
Immersive Promotional Media
Dr Stephanie Janes I’m coming to the end of the first year of my British Academy Postdoctoral Research project on Immersive Promotional Media (IPM). This is a 3-year project which will use interviews, focus group and analysis of immersive marketing campaigns to paint a clearer picture of what immersive promotional media is, how it is…
The Feminist Research Reading Group
Katrin Schindel The Feminist Research Reading Group has emerged out of the LISS-facilitated “Feminist Methods” seminar that took place at King’s College in the summer of 2018. The group is run by three PhD students, Sarah Louise Marks (Business School, Queen Mary), Sally King (Global Health & Social Medicine, King’s), and Katrin Schindel (CMCI, King’s). Our aim is to continue…
Energy in Store: How can museums encourage more productive relationships with their communities?
Dr Anna Woodham @Aura Films For the last year, I have been part of a project called ‘Energy in Store’ working with the Science Museum Group (SMG) to consider how museums can better meet the needs of diverse audiences. In particular, we have been looking at new ways of working with ‘enthusiast experts’ that could benefit not only the experts themselves but also new generations of researchers, the museum and…
Reflections on the Cultural Memory Group: Forgetting in the Digital Media Ecology
Taylor Annabell At a recent session of the Culture Memory Group, Professor Andrew Hoskins from the University of Glasgow invited us to consider the significance of forgetting in understanding memory and in particular, approaching memory in the digital media ecology. In my PhD project I have followed the path of memory studies in focusing on memory…
CMCI Emerging Voices 2019: “Beyond Disciplines”
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…
Symposium “Invisible Children: Children’s Media, Diversity, and Forced Migration”, 14 September 2018, King’s College London
Providing Children’s Content in an Era of Migration: Challenges and Opportunities Review by Public Media Alliance, 24 September 2018 Access the original post here. European and Middle Eastern practitioners, producers, public broadcast representatives, academics, children’s media experts and the PMA gathered at King’s College London to discuss children’s content provision, with a focus on diversity and…
Live Cinema Summit 2018
Live Cinema UK is the UK’s only organisation focused on bringing artists, exhibitors, distributors and producers closer together to create experiential cinema events. Based in West Yorkshire, Live Cinema UK curates innovative programmes and new art works inspired by the moving image, advising and partnering with cultural promoters regionally (Leeds International Film Festival, Screen Yorkshire,…
Troubled Waters, Stormy Futures: heritage in times of accelerated climate change
The winter storms of 2013-2014 set new precedents of coastal damage in the UK, forcing government, heritage bodies and local communities to seriously reconsider the future management of coastal heritage. Relevant organisations were seemingly unprepared for these events, and communities were possibly surprised by what had happened, as well as by their own emotional response.…
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