Tag Archives: Research Seminar

In Place of War – February Research Seminar

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inplaceof
The Centre for Media & Cultural Research welcomed the University of Manchester’s Professor James Thompson and his colleague Ruth Daniel to present at our regular Research Seminar event on Wednesday 6th February.

James and Ruth came to talk about their recently completed In Place of War (IPOW) research project and the follow on project Humanitarianism 2.0. This project is in partnership with the Centre and I’ll talk more about this a little later.

In Place of War was an AHRC funded research project and was driven by Professor Thompson’s background in theatre and drama performance and studies, and in particular his work in the UK prison service working with violent offenders using drama and theatre practices and methods.

In 2000, James was contacted by the Unicef unit, Children Affected by Armed Conflict, who were working in Northern Sri Lanka, which at that time was a civil war zone. Unicef asked James to provide training for community organisations who were interested in using theatre as a way of engaging with young people affected by the war. Before leaving the UK , James did some research on theatre in Sri Lanka and was astonished to find a) very little literature about this subject, b) that what he did find claimed there was no theatre in the north of Sri Lanka because of the war.

Upon reaching Sri Lanka though, James discovered a rich, vibrant and diverse theatre and arts community who were programming a range of activities across a number of places and spaces in the city of Jaffna. Jaffna was also home to the only university Theatre Studies course on the whole island.

This was to be the seed for the In Place Of War project and the central research questions; Why do people continue to make art in war zones? Why do academics assume they don’t?

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Research Seminar Series: 3rd October

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2pm – Speaker: Professor Tim Wall

Title: Research Activities and REF Return Strategy 2012/13

3pm – Speaker: Dave Harte & Jerome Turner

Title: ‘Understanding the role of Hyperlocal Publishing as an aspect of Creative Citizenship’

Given that ‘Hyperlocal’ publishing on the Internet is now attracting the attention of policy-makers (Ofcom 2012), investors (Nesta 2012) and researchers (such as Kurpius et al 2010), it seems timely to assess the scale of such websites in the UK. This paper reports on research completed as part of the ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen’ project on behalf of Ofcom. This study uses existing data that identifies websites that are, by and large, independent of mainstream media organisations and whose intended audience is from a specific, often small, geographic area. It outlines the number of active Hyperlocal websites and the volume of stories they produce. It finds that whilst the challenge they pose to the local press might be overstated, their collective output, and continued growth, is of a scale that warrants further research.

As one of the three major projects funded by the AHRC under their Connected Communities and the Creative Economy strand, the ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen’ project is utilising a range of research methods to better understand the potential value of the acts of creative citizenship which lie at the heart of hyperlocal news. A range of research methods are planned such as content analysis, interviews and focus groups. This paper also reflects on the value of those methods, describes planned future methods and outlines some early observations from the project.