Plenary sessions

Plenary Sessions

Confirmed plenary speakers include:

Opening Plenary

Professor Graham Murdock: Graham is a Professor of Culture and Economy at Loughborough University, UK. His research focuses on issues around change, power, inequality, risk and representation. Specifically, he has focused on organisational changes in the cultural and communication industries; the future of public cultural institutions; the social and cultural impact of new technologies; social and cultural changes in Asian societies; and popular representations and responses to perceived risks and threats. Graham is the author or editor of six books and over fifty articles.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/academicandresearch/murdock-graham.html

Dr. Shakuntala Banaji: Shakuntala is a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She participated in several large cross-European projects on young people, new technologies, schooling and democratic participation between 2006 and 2014. She is currently UK project director of a multi-country Horizon 2020 project, CATCH-EyoU, on active youth citizenship in Europe (2015-2018), and Principle Investigator for a collaborative project with American University Sharjah on participatory culture, the internet and creative production in the Middle East (2015-2017). Shakuntala is the author of five books, and has published widely on gender and politics in relation to South Asian media, Hindi cinema, audiences, creativity, news reception and online civic participation.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/WhosWho/AcademicStaff/ShakuntalaBanaji.aspx

Communication Rights

Chair

Professor Marc Raboy: Marc is a full Professor and Beaverbrook Chair in Ethics, Media and Communications in McGill University’s Department of Art History and Communication Studies, in Montreal, Canada. He is the author or editor of seventeen books and more than one hundred journal articles or book chapters, as well as reports for such organizations as the World Bank, UNESCO, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, the European Broadcasting Union, the Policy Research Secretariat of the Government of Canada, and the Quebec Ministry for Culture and Communication. He is also a founding member of an international advocacy campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society.
https://www.mcgill.ca/ahcs/people/faculty/raboy

Speakers

Anita Gurumurthy: Anita is a founding member and executive director of IT for Change, an India-based NGO that works at the intersection of development and digital technologies. The organisational vision on social justice in the network society draws upon Southern critiques of mainstream development, and its key strategy is to create and work through trust-based coalitions and horizontal alliances. Through her work at IT for Change, Anita has attempted to promote conversations between theory and practice. In addition to research responsibilities at IT for Change, Anita also leads the work of the organisation's field resource centre that works with grassroots communities on 'technology for social change' models. Equity and community-ownership, focusing particularly on socially marginalized women, are the cornerstones of such model building.
http://www.itforchange.net/Anita

Professor Sonia Livingstone: Sonia is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, UK. Her research asks why and how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action, identity and communication rights. Her empirical work examines the opportunities and risks afforded by digital and online technologies, including for children and young people at home and school, for developments in media and digital literacies, and for audiences, publics and the public sphere more generally, with a recent focus on children’s rights in the digital age. Sonia is author or editor of nineteen books and many journal articles. In 2014, she was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 'for services to children and child internet safety.'
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/WhosWho/AcademicStaff/soniaLivingstone.aspx

Professor Thomas Tufte: Thomas is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Arts at Roskilde University, Denmark and co-director of the Orecomm Centre for Communication and Glocal Change (https://orecomm.net/).  His research explores how the communication practices of governments, NGOs and social movements enhance opportunities for citizen-led change. His is particularly interested in what it takes to enable citizens’ voices, participation, and power in processes of social change. Thomas currently directs the Nordic-Kenyan research project Critical Perspectives on Processes of New Media and Social Change in the Global South. Thomas is the author of many journal articles and author or editor of fifteen books, including The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change (edited with Karin Gwinn Wilkins and Rafael Obregon, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014).
http://rucforsk.ruc.dk/site/en/persons/thomas-tufte%2861f945b8-90b9-4a67-8c6d-affe30140f06%29.html

Memory, Commemoration and Communication

Chair

Professor Annabelle Sreberny: Annabelle is Emeritus Professor at the School of Oriental Studies based at the University of London, UK. Annabelle is a former President of IAMCR (2008-2012), and her work focuses on theories of globalization, particularly in relation to gender issues and the changing configurations of the public and private. She has also focused on media and processes of socio-political change and democratization in the South, with particular emphasis on the Middle East and Iran. Annabelle is author or editor of four books and many more book articles and chapters.
https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31856.php

Speakers

Dr Emily Keightley: Emily is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Lougborough University, UK. Emily’s main research interest is memory, time and its mediation in everyday life. She is particularly concerned with the role of media in the relationship between individual, social and cultural memory. Emily’s research explores the roles of photography and phonography in the articulation of everyday memory and the gendered nature of mnemonic experience. She is the author or editor of four books and twenty-five journal articles or chapters.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/academicandresearch/keightley-emily.html

Professor Michael Pickering: Michael is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis at Loughborough University, UK. Michael’s work covers a number of areas including popular music, racism and popular culture, imperialism and theatrical history, Mass Observation, working-class writing, news and documentary, stereotyping and representation, humour and comedy, creativity and cultural production, media and memory, and historical hermeneutics. He has also written extensively on research methods, having edited collections on methods in cultural studies and memory studies. He has published eighteen books as author or editor, and has written over one hundred articles and chapters.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/socialsciences/staff/pickering-michael.html

Professor Barbie Zelizer: Barbie is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School of Communication, based at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her research focuses on the cultural dimensions of journalism, with a specific interest in journalistic authority, collective memory, and journalistic images in times of crisis and war. She also works on the impact of disciplinary knowledge on academic inquiry. Barbie is author or editor of twelve books and numerous articles and chapters.
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/people/faculty/barbie-zelizer-phd

Dr Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt: Keren is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on cultural and political dimensions of journalism from a comparative perspective, media and conflict, mediated memory, and the intersection of journalism, political communication and popular culture. Her work has received numerous awards from bodies such as the International Communication Association, and she is the editor of Journalism and Memory (2014) along with Barbie Zelizer.

https://scholars.huji.ac.il/tenenboim-weinblattkeren