Travel report: November 16th to 21st of November 2014

University of Queensland, Brisbane

RMIT, Melbourne

Names on travellers: Prof. Oscar Hemer, K3, Culture and Society PhD, Erliza Lopez Pedersen, K3, Culture and Society Lecturer, Kathrine Winkelhorn, K3 Culture and Society Cecilia Christersson visited UQ a week after us.

Objectives: Shortly, the aim of the extended Australian trip (Brisbane and Melbourne) was to seize the opportunity to further develop relations with the two Australian universities that have master and PhD education in Communication for Development while in Australia (Adelaide) for the Glocal Classroom project. As an additional option PhD. Erliza Lopez Pedersen visited the University of the Philippines-Los Baños, and Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, both in the Philippines University of Queensland - Brisbane has a strong focus on teaching excellence. It has one of Australia's largest PhD enrolments, and all in all more than 12,600 postgraduate students (15 per cent of the student body). UQ is one of the rather few universities that have graduate students as well as Master students in Communication for Social Change. It has established eight research institutes, many with a multidisciplinary focus. For KS two of these research institutes are of particular interest.

Institute for Global Change Reseach: http://www.gci.uq.edu.au/ Institute for Social Sciences Research http://www.issr.uq.edu.au/

At UQ we met with Elske van de Fliert and Pradip Thomas and discussed various ways of collaboration. Both parties seem to be particularly interested in developing joint research projects and online seminars. On top of these discussions Oscar Hemer and Erliza Pedersen conducted a 2 hours seminar with some 30 Phd students and quite a few faculties.

Oscar Hemer visited UQ in 2006, for a conference on Communication for Social Change, which marked the inauguration of the Centre for Communication and Social Change, which undertakes collaborative research under four themes:

Participatory development communication Media and empowerment ICTs for social change Communication for transdisciplinary research for development (R4D)

These areas correspond very well to the subjects of the ComDev programme in Malmö, and there is a strong mutual interest in developing forms for collaboration at both master and PhD level. We intend to investigate possibilities of double degrees and of joint PhD courses/seminars. A concrete collaboration project could be a co-edited issue of Glocal Times, whose editor (Florencia Enghel) has had close contact with CCSC during her PhD work.

Erliza Lopez Pedersen writes:

It was a great experience to meet other PhD students at UQ and to get to know some of their projects. Later on, Elske suggested in an email to me that perhaps an online intervention in the future can be set up to function as a platform for ideas between ComDev PhD(s) and their students. My research caught the attention of Professor Tom O’Regan (School of Journalism) who asked to be updated on the development of my project. I was also introduced by the communications staff of the department to the Filipino radio community in Brisbane, which can be useful for my PhD project.

Contacts at Uiniversity of Queensland, Brisbane

Elske van de Fliert (e.vandefliert@uq.edu.au)

Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication

Pradip Thomas (pradip.thomas@uq.edu.au)

Director of the Center for Communication and Social Change

Professor Tom O’Regan (t.oregan@uq.edu.au)

RMIT – Melbourne,

RMIT is a global university of technology and design with an international reputation for

excellence in practical education and outcome-oriented research. RMIT has three campuses in

Melbourne and two in Vietnam, offering programmes through partners in Singapore, Hong Kong,

China, Malaysia, India and Europe. The student population is some 74,000 including 30,000

international students, of whom more than 17,000 are taught offshore. We consider RMIT as a

perfect match for Malmo University in general and K3 in particular, with a strong international

competitiveness in the specialized field of Communication for Development. Professor Jo Tacchi,

currently heading the RMIT Europe department in Barcelona, is one of the leading researchers

in the field and a close partner of Örecomm. She has participated in three of the Örecomm

Festivals and has moreover been a guest professor at Roskilde University. We met with Jo’s

research colleague John Postill, who is a Media anthropologist (initiator of the Media

anthropology Network http://www.media-anthropology.net/and also an Örecomm associate; he

was a speaker on the first Festival in 2011, and has also given an open seminar at K3 in 2012),

and had a very productive brain storm session on potential future areas for research

collaboration, for example “transcultural ethnographies”. We ended up with a suggestion to

make a joint online seminar sometime 2015/16 under the headline “The Communication Crisis”

(referring to and possibly linking up with Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s Overheating project, where

he defines three global crises: Financial, Environment and Identity).

John Postill (and Jo Tacchi) are both part of the Center for digital ethnography

(http://www.rmit.edu.au/research/derc), founded in 2012 by Larissa Hjorth and Heather Horst

(director). DERC is currently focusing upon three research areas: Media Methods; Design +

Ethnography and Emergent Media Practices (EMP).

Among the other researchers at DERC are:

Heater Horst writes about digital teaching and high tech families.

Sara Pink is a star within visual ethnography and she has worked with local activism or

rather Internet and activism.

Larissa Hjorth is interested in the creative expressions of digital ethnograophy and has

made an interesting distinction between the mobile and the Internet.

Tanya Louis is more interested in working with TV and in particular Life Style TV.

At RMIT we also met with the Deputy Dean, International, Marianne Sison, who expressed great

satisfaction with the collaboration with Malmö so far (mainly Interaction Design) and an interest

in deepening this collaboration and extending it to other areas, for example ComDev. Herself

originally from the Philippines she took special interest in Erliza´s project and provided some

valuable contacts for her.

Contacts at RMIT

Marianne Sison (marianne.sison@rmit.edu.au)

Deputy Dean, International

John Postill (john.postill@rmit.edu.au)

Research Fellow

Prof Jo Tahchi (jo.tachi@rmit.edu.au)

Researcher and Head of RMIT Europe office, Barcelona

University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB)

UPLB has a strong interest in establishing a connection with ComDev. Prior to the visit by Erliza

Lopez Pedersen, Oscar Hemer emailed a MoU draft to UPLB According to the dean the MoU draft

has been sent to the university’s international office for review. The College of Development of

Communication has programs from bachelor to PhD studies level. They are also part of the

University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) that offers online programs up to PhD

level.

Contacts at University of the Philippines-Los Baños

Ma. Theresa Velasco (mthvelasco@devcom.edu.ph)

Dean, College of Development Communication

Madeline Suva (mmsuva@devcom.edu.ph)

Associate Professor, College of Development Communication

The Xavier University-DevCom department has only a bachelor level program, however they

are waiting for the Philippines’ Commission on Higher Education’s approval of their proposed

master level program. The downside with XU is that they don’t have a master’s degree program,

but the department has strong partnerships with local actors (media, organizations, NGOs, and

industries). They have recently established the Center for Communication for Development

(CC4D) to cater to C4D needs, communication and development studies. The contact persons,

Theresa and Evans, have presented at the recent Örecomm Festival and they would like to

collaborate with ComDev at research and staff exchange level (supervision and teaching). Evans

and Erliza have plans to write a paper together within the theme of migration and

communication for development.

Contacts at: Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan (XU)

Maria Theresa Rivera (matheresa.rivera@gmail.com)

Associate Professor, Development Communication Department

Evans Yonson (eyonson@xu.edu.ph)

Associate, Professor, Development Communication Department

Sheila Balbutin (sbalbutin@xu.edu.ph)

Director, Center for Communication for Development

Contacts at Flinders University

Susanne Schech (Susanne.schech@flinders.edu.au)

Professor, Director of the Centre for Development Studies,

Chair of the School of International Studies Research Committee

Colin Carati (colin.carati@flinders.edu.au)

Executive Director (ICT Strategy and Integration)

Richard Constantine (richard.constantine@flinders.edu.au)

Pro-Vice Chancellor (Information Services) and Chief Information Officer

Maryanne Kelton (maryanne.kelton@flinders.edu.au)

Senior lecturer, International relations

Result of the journey

The Glocal Classroom seminar and workshop at Flinders University in Adelaide was

extraordinarily successful and will surely be followed up by further bilateral collaboration

between Malmö and Flinders. We are in discussions with both Flinders and Guelph about how to

continue the collaboration, which we intend to do regardless of further external funding. The GC

project will conclude with a symposium in Malmö in September, but we are planning some form

of joint seminar or other course collaboration later in the year, building on the experience of the

Timor Leste conference and “hypothetical”, the latter being a pedagogical tool with immense

innovative potential that we wish to implement and develop further in Malmö.

In addition to the common ground in web-based pedagogy there is a mutual interest in course

development and research collaboration (with Susanne Schech) in the area of ComDev, which

may imply a new orientation for International Development Studies at Flinders.

As for both UQ and RMIT, the journey resulted in the confirmation of our mutual intents of

collaboration in ComDev, although no formal agreements were signed (there is already a

bilateral agreement with RMIT, and we expected Cecilia Christersson to sign a general MoU with

UQ). We also intend to sign a formal agreement with UPLB and look forward to “triangular”

collaboration with Australia and the Philippines. Malmö was part of the Communication for

Development and Social Change University Network that was formed in 2005 in Los Baños.

Although the network itself has not survived, it has had many fortunate results, for example our

long-standing bilateral collaboration with Guelph. Ten years down the line, when ComDev is

becoming an established part of Malmö University, we are eager to reestablish the links with one

of the pioneering institutions. With Erliza’s PhD project we have a natural connection point to

the Philippines (both UPLB and Xavier University). We foresee possible course collaboration

(double degree) and staff and PhD exchange.

The Asia-Pacific is probably the world’s most dynamic region at present, and of great interest for

Communication for Development. With our partners in Australia and the Philippines (and

universities in other countries in the region such as Japan and Indonesia) we hope to establish

an equally dynamic base for collaboration and exchange in both research and pedagogy

Malmö, 9 January 2015,

Kathrine Winkelhorn

Erliza Lopez Pedersen

Oscar Hemer

Photos:

University of Queensland:

RMIT:

UPLB: