Month: May 2014

The stay here in New York is moving towards its final hours and tonight we fly to Toronto to attend the conference at the University of Guelph, starting thursday morning. But first we have a meeting this morning with Reboot, on organisation devoted to enhance social progress around the world. Hopefully we can have an interesting exchange of ideas and further decrease the distance between social organisations and academia, especially in terms of international relations.

During our stay here we have had meetings with both NYU and New School University as well as Unicef, discussing possible cooperations with our master in Communication for Development. So far all meetings have turned out well and strengthened our international contacts and above all, they have opened up for more collaborative efforts in the future.

The content of these meetings will need longer posts to be described, but I will do so in the near future.

We leave New York tonight and go to Toronto for an early start tomorrow with the seminars on Communication for Social and Environmental Change. The event will be streamed live and you should be able to follow it in real time on video, Twitter and other social platforms. I will post links as I get them when arriving to the conference. My presentation will focus on Middle East media and political activism and more specifically on the correlation between perceptions of digital resistance technologies and the actual use and implementation of it. And as I read that last sentence I realised I should start preparing.

Michael

After spending about 14 hours on planes, airports and endless security checks, yesterday we arrived to Newark Airport and New York City. This morning our delegation, so far consisting of me, Tobias, Oscar, Rebecka and Micke R (few others will join later on) walked the streets from our hotel in Chelsea (no, not the famous Hotel Chelsea but another one) and all the way past Madison Square Garden, Times Square and Central Park. Since our meetings starts later this afternoon we have all had time to experience parts of this magnificent city and for me, who has never been here before, its been a totally wonderful experience. The majestic buildings, the atmosphere, the sounds and smells – everything is simply amazing. I will definitely try to come back as soon as possible.

Right now it is about three in the afternoon and we are preparing to go separate ways. I will visit New School University and meet the Dean of The School of Media Studies, mainly to discuss collaboration and possible exchange agreements between our departments. The rest of our group will meet up with NYU and the Centre for Global Affairs to present our educational programme and discuss future cooperations with our master in Communication for Development. Lets hope both of our meetings will be successful. Later tonight I will try to find my way down to lower Manhattan and meet the rest for dinner. Big day tomorrow as well.

Will try to write a longer post later tonight or tomorrow, but for now it will have to be enough with the following pictures of our time here so far. Enjoy !

/Michael

So tomorrow I am off to New York and Toronto for meetings and conference participation. Never been there so I hope to enjoy every minute of it.

The purpose of this trip is two-fold. First of all, three days in New York will mostly consist of meetings with two universities, The New School University and NYU, in order to discuss possible collaborative efforts regarding student/teachers exchange as well as other forms of cooperation between our respective master educations. I am travelling with colleagues from Malmö University and the master programme in Communication for Development and my department are launching a new two year master in Media- and communication studies, focusing on collaborative media, in late 2015. Just as ComDev, the new will be web-based and therefore global cooperations between universities is an important aspect of running such an educational form. I hope to contribute to develop such a cooperation through this trip.

The second part of the trip is a conference at University of Guelph in Toronto, within the project The Glocal Classroom (financed by Stint). Different types of presentations concerning communication and development will constitute the core of the conference, and I will present on Media activism in the Middle East. Hopefully it will be stimulating discussions and interesting experiences. I will try to blog while I am away, so stay tuned:)