This is a seminar that is highly relevant to ComDev students and those working in the field of Communication for Development and we strongly recommend that you attend in Roskilde or follow the live webcast online if you can.

The seminar is on Wednesday May 8th, at Roskilde University in Denmark

Speakers for this 7^th What Time is Global History seminar include Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Oscar Hemer.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse’s book Development Theory (2^nd edition 2010) is a key text for the Communication for Development masters programme and this is an excellent opportunity to hear him speak.

Jan Nedverveen Pieterse’s lecture has the title ‘Histories of Globalization’ and he speaks at 13:15 – 13:45 CET (11:15 – 11:45 GMT).

Prof. Oscar Hemer, Communication for Development programme coordinator and co-director of the Örecomm Research group will speak on ‘Global Histories Through the Lens of Fiction’. Oscar speaks at14:15 – 14:45 CET (12:15 – 12:45 GMT).

The whole of this seminar will be broadcast in LIVE LECTURE for ComDev students or you can follow here on the ComDev Blog and orecomm.net

The seminar starts and 13:00 CET (11:00 GMT) and finishes 17:00 CET (15:00 GMT). For a full programme and concept note see here

The seminar takes place at Roskilde University, Denmark. Auditorium 45. See map

If you would like to attend in person please register here.

Ørecomm – Centre for Communication and Glocal Change invites researchers, artists, students and practitioners to its 3rd Festival, 13–16 September2013. The Festival will start in Roskilde (1 day), move on to Malmö (2 days) and close in Copenhagen(1 day):

Memory on Trial:
Media, Citizenship and Social Justice

Living memory is a process by which citizens create meaning of the present and near past. Living memory confirms, explores or challenges dominant understandings of societal development. The media are dominating agents of memory, producing as well as silencing tensions between living memories and established history. This conflict between official history and its alternative or silenced voices has become a central concern of media, communication and cultural studies. In recent decades, we have witnessed a memory turn in the humanities and social sciences, with implications for the field of communication for development.

The third Ørecomm Festival puts the memory turn under scrutiny, addressing living memories in relation to two other central components of public sphere engagement: citizenship and social justice. As citizens we (can) actualize or make a public – and in this making we inevitably engage with social justice. Citizenship and Social Justice are of primary importance in societal debates concerning what, how and for whom we should remember – not least in transitional processes of attempted healing and conciliation. Memory work may be decisive for a society’s ability to live and develop in peace. The Festival organizers welcome investigations and interrogations of memory and how it affects aspirations for social justice and sustainable development.

Abstracts (200-300 words) due: 15 June 2013

Acceptance message: By end of June 2013

Registration (online from May): closes 1 September 2013

Contact to Festival committee: orecomm@gmail.com

For the full concept note and a list of proposed themes see here on orecomm.net

Malmö University is a member of SPIDER (The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions) and we have the privilege to offer travel grants to Master level students for doing field work (Degree Project) in developing countries. You can apply for a grant from 15.000 to 25.000 SEK (ca 1.600 to 2.700 €). The project must concern ”New Media and ICT for Development” and/or have an ICT4D component, and the field work must be carried out in what Sida defines as a developing country (which is not your home country). SPIDER prioritizes travel to Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Bolivia, but note that the application is to be made to Malmö University, and the decision of approval/rejection is taken locally. All Malmö University students at Master level – regardless of citizenship or residence – are eligible for the grants.
To apply for a grant, you must submit a Project PM that describes the outlines of your intended field work and a preliminary budget. Applications can be sent by e-mail and ordinary mail to
Oscar Hemer
Malmö University
School of Arts and Communication (K3)
S-205 06 Malmö
Sweden
oscar.hemer@mah.se
Deadline for application: 15 May

Between April and September 2013 UNDP in Copenhagen are offering a 6 month unpaid internship with their Interagency Sustainability Team.

The internship is open to University students (post-graduate/ research students) in Development Studies/ Public Health/ Public or Business Administration / Environmental Studies or any other related field. The successful applicant must be fluent in English.

The internship would be 15 – 20 hours a week and is flexible to meet the students requirements. UNDP say that

“Internships offer a small group of outstanding graduate-level students the opportunity to acquire direct exposure to UNDP’s work. They are designed to complement development-oriented studies with practical experience in various aspects of multilateral technical cooperation, but also complement other international studies, including law”.

For a full job description and additional information on internships at UNDP see here  UNDP CPH Internship April 2013

To apply send a resume and covering letter to the email addresses below no later than 1^st April. Please indicate in your cover letter:

-your motivation
-your availability over the period
-any relevant work experience

Please email your application to:

pranisha.bajracharya@undp.organd Volker.welter@undp.org(the email must be sent to both)

For more information, please contact Pranisha Bajracharya at +45 4533 6065 or Volker Welter at + 45 4533 6050

Haron Mwangi is CEO at the Media Council of Kenya he is visiting the Öresund as a guest of International Media Support (IMS) in Denmark . We are very pleased to announce that during his visit he will give an open Ørecomm guest lecture at Malmö University on Thursday 14 March 2013.

Haron Mwangi will speak on: Elections and the Media in Post-Conflict Africa: The case for Kenya

The lecture is scheduled for 15:00-16:30 local Swedish time (14:00 – 15:30 GMT) .

The lecture takes place at the Radiostationen, K3, Östra Varvsgatan 11 C (ground floor, side entry). It will also be videostreamed live here on the ComDev Portal. If you would like to attend in person please go here to register.

Haron Mwangi has over 15 years experience in media policy and regulation research and project management. He has extensive experience in media, corporate communications and marketing. In the Media Council of Kenya, Haron Mwangi has supervised a number of studies, e.g. on the role of media in Kenyan elections and on media freedom in East Africa. The Media Council has worked together with International Media Support (IMS) in Denmark, to produce a handbook on Conflict Sensitive Journalism. Mr. Mwangi’s lecture has been arranged in collaboration with IMS.

This article on braingainmag.com summarizes nicely what is so special about ComDev’s own particular brand of integrated distance learning. braingainmag.com is aimed specifically at an audience in South Asia and covers all areas connected to International Study.

Read the braingainmag.com article here

Speaking Up and Talking Back? Media Empowerment and Civic Engagement among East and Southern African Youth is a new book edited by Örecomm participants Thomas Tufte, Norbert Wildermuth, Anne Sofie Hansen-Skovmoes and Winnie Mitullah. Published by Nordicom as a yearbook from the International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media, this book surveys and explores the dynamic processes of media development and the enlargement of youth driven, deliberative spaces which sub-Saharan Africa is currently experiencing

Speaking Up and Talking Back? Includes a chapter written by ComDev alumnus Rosalind Yarde. In her contribution Hidden Voices on Air. Empowering Tanzanian Youth through Participatory Radio Rosalind draws on her ComDev degree project work in which she collaborated with a group of former street children in the town of Moshi, northern Tanzania to produce participatory radio.

For more information about Speaking Up and Talking Back? Go Here!

To read more about Rosalind’s work in Tanzania and her studies with ComDev Go Here!

To read Rosalind’s ComDev degree project Go Here!

The first ComDev seminar of the 2013 Spring term takes place on Friday February 8th and Saturday 9th.

Principally for students studying the Communication, Culture and Media Analysis course this seminar will introduce the Communication and Development Cooperation module and assignments.

This first spring seminar also has lectures from Tina Askanius, Lund University, who will be presenting her work on ‘YouTube, video activism and social movement media practices’  Friday 8th.

In cooperation with the Örecomm Research Group we are also very happy to have Eric van den Broek and Katarina Rejger presenting their ‘Video Letters Project’ on Saturday 9th. Video Letters was designed to further reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia who had once been friends but were estranged by the bloody nationalist conflicts of the early 1990s. Eric and Katarina have gone on to develop the video letters concept into a multimedia tool which has also been applied in Rwanda.

You can find a full schedule for both Friday 8th and Saturday 9th here

The seminar will take place at K3, in the ‘Radiostation’.

Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society, K3 – School of Arts and Communication
Venue: Östra Varvsgatan 11 C, See map From Malmö Central station take bus nr8 to V.Hamnen, get off at stop: Ubåtshallen.

The entrance to the Radiostation is on the ground floor of the Kranen Building.

The Dutch film-makers Eric van den Broek and Katarina Rejger are guest lecturers at next week-end’s ComDev seminar (8-9 February). They had made several documentary films about the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990′s, when they embarked on an extraordinary project called “Videoletters, ” designed to further reconciliation among people from the former Yugoslavia who had once been friends and who had been separated and even alienated by the bloody nationalist conflict.
The idea was simple: someone who had lost touch with, say, a childhood friend or a lifelong neighbor from a different ethnic group was invited to record a message. The directors then traced and showed the video letter to the “lost” friend, who was usually eager to reply. In most cases, the exchange resulted in an emotional reunion.
Rather than revisiting horrors, the project seeks to demonstrate that reconciliation is possible, starting with individuals for whom ethnic differences were unimportant – many former Yugoslavs are themselves of mixed extraction – until the conflicts convulsed their lives.
Some of these video letters have been broadcast by television stations in each of the seven nations that were once Yugoslavia – Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia.
Eric van den Broek and Katarina Rejger have developed the multi media tool and applied it in Rwanda as well. They have received the Human Rights Nestor Almendros Prizefor courage in film making.
The Örecomm Open Seminar on the Videoletters project is in Radiostationen, Ö Varvsgatan 11 C, Saturday 9 February, 12-15

The conference Mediating Modernity in the 21st Century: Rethinking & Remembering, held 24-25 January at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India, is the core event of an ongoing experimental project of artistic and academic collaboration between Srishti and K3, Malmö University. The Memories of Modernity project, involving students and faculty at the two institutions, aims at exploring the dynamic city of Bangalore (which in the last decade has doubled its population from 5 to 10 million) by means of transdisciplinary interventions.
The two-day conference, with presentations of both academic papers and artistic work, is organized along three parallel subtheme tracks: ”Gendering Modernities”, ”Memories of Modernities” and ”Modernities, Cities and Public Spheres”. Keynote speakers are Indian American anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, New York University (author of Modernity at Large, 1996, one of the early key works on Globalization), Cultural sociologist Asu Aksoy, Istanbul Bilgi University (well-known to ComDev students as co-researcher with Kevin Robins on Transnational Communication), and artist and philosoopher Jyoti Sahi, Srishti.
Four K3 students (from the ComDev and KMP master programmes) are currently in India to do their Degree Projects as part of this collaboration. The keynote addresses and one of the parallel panels will be streamed on the ComDev portal and in Live Lecture (Degree Project). See the full programme at the conference website http://srishti.ac.in/mmf/beta/home.html