Welcome to a K3 seminar with Helena Sandberg, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies, Lund University, Ulrika Sjöberg, Professor in Media and Communication Studies, Malmö University, and Ebba Sundin, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies, Halmstad University.

The title of the seminar is DigiKids: Data Management and Ethics in Research.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, May 19 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69941313968?pwd=OCtWQkIvemdVQjBOZkZEM1pSMnhSdz09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

During the seminar, we will share our experiences from the ongoing four-year project DigiKids Sweden, funded by the Swedish Research Council (dnr 2018-01261). The aim of the project is to gain new insights into the ways in which digital media informs and permeates the everyday lives of 0-3-year-old children. The project focuses on approximately 20 children and their families in a time condensed ethnography, inspired by the ‘A Day in the Life’ methodology, involving three visits in each family, and the construction of a thick set of data through interviews, survey, observations and video-recordings of the children in the domestic sphere.

This seminar will focus upon some practical issues related to research conduct and procedure. More specifically we will talk about research ethics and data management. In the seminar the following questions will be addressed: What is formal and informal ethics? What is ethical vetting and what is important in an application for ethical approval? What ethical guidelines are there when working with young children? What is a data management plan, and what should or could be included in such a document? How could data be shared and stored in a safe way in collaborative research? In the presentation we will mainly draw from our experiences and reflections from working with very young children in their homes.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Joshka Wessels, Senior Lecturer in Communication for Development, K3

The title of the seminar is Sustainable Sudan and ArcGIS story maps; graffiti and environmentalism for the future.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, May 12 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/62967981818?pwd=OU5xRlJNL0twMCtQSDVtMVJzb3hjdz09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

This seminar will discuss work in progress of a Field Grant that Joshka received from the French Institute in Khartoum, Sudan (CEDEJ) and is related to two main thematic research areas 1) the study of social movements and 2) the ongoing political, economic and social configurations. Just when the world was convinced that the Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 were dead, the year 2019 experienced new and renewed, and surprisingly successful, mass protests in the MENA region. The 2019 revolt in Sudan is seemingly the most successful uprising in the Arab world until date from this second wave of protests. The Sudanese revolution of 2019 brought together a nationwide group of Sudanese youth who want change in their country. Based on ongoing research in Sudan, the seminar reflects on the various components of Sudan’s revolution which ousted its dictator Omar Al Bashir after decades of authoritarian rule. In the words of its own revolutionaries this is thanks to a strong commitment to non-violent values, a vibrant artistic public sphere on the streets and its connection to online digital dissidence. To give a broader perspective on the ongoing social movements in Sudan, this study explores the role of young environmental activists in the Sudanese Revolution more in-depth. In particular, the study of the Sudanese environmental movement and its relations with the Sudanese Revolution of 2019 and the ongoing transformations at political and social levels aimed at sustainable development.

Since the establishment of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Khartoum as early as 1977, Sudan has known a growing body of environmentalists who have been active in Sudan. In the revolution of 2019, a younger generation of educated environmentalists, both academics and activists, took the opportunity to make their voices heard. These visions for change can be seen and observed in the large body and collections of graffiti art and mural paintings throughout the public space in the city of Khartoum. Some of these murals give a clear picture of how the revolutionaries see and envision the Sudan they want to build (‘Hanabniho’ = ‘we will build’). The Hanabniho Youth Initiative (مبادرة حنبنيهو الشبابية) is one of those groups who emerged during the Sudanese Revolution with the aim to clean, rehabilitate the common areas and take care of the environment. Through extensive photographic documentation of revolutionary graffiti street art, ArcGIS storymaps and interviewing young revolutionaries and environmentalists in combination with organizing collaborative visioning workshops, this study documents past and future visions of Sudan’s revolutionary youth. Environmentalist communities and Sudanese revolutionary youths will be given the prospect to develop feasible Sustainable Future Youth Plans together that can be practically implemented in the short and long term.

Keywords: Urban Street Art, Graffiti, Communication for Change, MENA region, Arab Revolts, Sudan.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Jakob Svensson, Professor of Media and Communication Studies, K3.

The title of the seminar is Making the world magic again! Critical data studies through the lens of mathemagics and an empirical journey into tech cultures.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, May 5 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66061409839?pwd=M3VWUWNTUVNOaTFEL0JCQmdiQXI3Zz09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

This presentation will depart from my forthcoming book Wizards of the Web: An outsider’s journey into tech culture, programming and mathemagics (Nordicom, 2021). The rationale for this book was grounded in an argument from critical data studies, that we need to understand the people behind digital technology, data, algorithms and automated systems.

Magic was a central theme in my empirical encounters. Trying to understand the role of and specificities of magic in tech culture i outline what may be labelled as modern mathemagics, doing magic with numbers in the quest of progress and a better future for all.

Mathematical magic was discussed already in the 16th century by theologian Giordano Bruno, who will be introduced in the presentation. Bruno’s warning of evil side of mathemagics can be applied to contemporary data societies and be used for a normative argument against rigidity of computers and for re-humanising automation. I will also apply 1961 children’s book the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, and especially the character the Mathemagian, to forward this argument. What both Bruno and Juster also underline, is that it is possible to make the world magic again thus in a sense shows how tech is both modern and magical at the same time.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Therese Hellberg, PhD candidate in Media and Communication Studies.

The title of the seminar is Folkhemmet under förhandling: Svenskhet och skrivande i kvinnliga författares romaner och kåserier under perioden 1940 till 1955.

It will be Therese’s 75 percent PhD seminar. Anna Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature, Uppsala University, will function as discussant. The seminar will be held in Swedish.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Mónday, May 3 at 13.15-15.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64269526158.

Please note this seminar is on a Monday, and at 13.15.

Below is an abstract for the seminar. If you would like the manuscript for the seminar, mail Therese at therese.hellberg@mau.se.

Mitt doktorandprojekt syftar till att få ny kunskap om villkor för olika kvinnors författarskap under perioden 1940 till 1955 samt om hur betydande romaner och kåserier producerar föreställningar om folkhemmet som nationell gemenskap. Texterna är betydande genom deras samtida popularitet, samtidigt som de genom könsbundna värderingar och tolkningsföreträden länge marginaliserats i forskning och historieskrivning.

Romaner och kåserier skrivna av kvinnor, så kallad kvinnolitteratur, är en marginaliserad populärlitterär sfär i relation till den höglitterära offentligheten. I den senare har det manliga och borgerliga framställts som allmängiltigt och värdefullt. Negativa värderingar av ”kvinnan” placerar kvinnors texter i en egen kategori där det partikulära och privata betonas. Genom marknadsföring och reception tonas de idéer som utmanar det könskomplementära folkhemsbygget ned, eller som i vissa fall, lyfts sådana idéer fram av kritiker som ett argument för att nedvärdera romanerna. Den återkommande kampen om att få tala och bryta sig loss från den underordnade mediala, litterära och samhälleliga positionen syns i författarnas texter. Den berättar både om begräsningar och utrymmen att uttrycka sig.

Betydelser och värdet av ”kvinnan” kopplas nära samman med idéer om svenskhet och moderskap. Jag lyfter fram hur medborgarskapet görs genom de olika idéer som framträder i texterna om moderskap, sexualitet och (yrkes)arbete. Dessa texter skildrar också äktenskap, abort, våld och våldtäkter. Det rör sig om komplexa diskussioner om synen på och värderingen av kvinnan genom föreställningar om vad som är friskt och livsbejakande respektive patologiskt och vulgärt. I de texter som kritiserar att en kvinnas värde i folkhemmet är avhängigt det svenska moderskapet knyts den nationella och patriarkala ordningen till varandra. I andra skildringar luckras denna koppling upp. Exempelvis genom att nationella argument – om att föda svenska barn med goda anlag till nationen – används mot den patriarkala ordningens idé om att moderskapet också ska ske inom äktenskapet.

I arbetarskildringar kopplas kvinnors villkor också till frågor som rör fattigdom och bristen på utbildning, medan borgerliga skildringar tar utgångspunkt i frågor om social vanära. Synen på vad en kvinna är och kan vara både fixeras och breddas i de olika berättelserna. Överlag synliggörs och kritiseras mäns makt över och tillgång till kvinnor(s kroppar). Samtidigt görs också kvinnor delaktiga i att upprätthålla den patriarkala och nationella ordningen som värderar svenska gifta mödrar över andra kvinnor. Exempelvis pekas delar av medelklassens kvinnor ut för att exkludera ogifta mödrar ur gemenskapen som ett sätt att skydda den egna positionen som (blivande) moder och fru i folkhemmet.

Jag välkomnar alla synpunkter som bidrar till mitt vidare arbete med mitt doktorandprojekt.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Tindra Thor, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, K3 and Ketil Thorgersen, Senior Lecturer in Music Education, Stockholm University.

The title of the seminar is A Whiskey Lullaby – Functions of Alcohol in Country Music Lyrics.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, April 21 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69746621063?pwd=RTRFYWFTQk1wcjF1RmVyT0ZRL0dmQT09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

It is Saturday, September 9th 2017, and we are watching a family television show on Norwegian Public Broadcasting (NRK) – “Stjernekamp” [“Star Battle”]. The show concept is having artists performing songs from different genres. Tonight’s genre is country music, a genre we only know superficially. The first five artists all make decent performances and the mood in the sofa is good when the artist Aleksander Walmann enters the stage. At the end of the first verse, and to our surprise, tears are running down both our faces as he sings about lost love and how the lovers in the song “put a bottle to their heads and pull the trigger”.

Country music is a genre where lyrics are considered important. Studies about country music lyrics often point to the importance of lyrics to set the stage and that some topics are typical for country music lyrics such as lost love, loneliness, childhood memories and nostalgia,  and that they construct a closed narrative that rarely comments actual events in the real world (Jaret, 1982; Neal, 2007). One tool that is being used to construct narratives with these topics is alcohol. Alcohol has been shown to be particularly common to describe unhappy love, pain and anguish, loneliness and failure – or on the other hand enjoying life and comfort (Connors & Alpher, 1989).

In this study we turn our focus to the different functions of alcohol in country music lyrics and explore the purposes and meanings of alcohol in the genre from 1990 up until today. Through a mixed methods approach, we have, first, quantitatively analyzed songs and album songs nominated for Country Music Awards (CMA) (N=1291). The qualitative analysis includes the songs where alcohol plays a particularly important part. The lyrics will be analyzed through a narrative analysis and explored through the theoretical concepts of myths (Barthes, 2009); liquid modernity, and retrotopia (Bauman, 2017).

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Gunnar Krantz, Professor of Visual Communication, K3, and Sara Teleman, Professor of Illustration, Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design.

The title of the seminar is Drawing from experience in higher education and research.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, April 14 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66605759303?pwd=dVJnOG4yUHIzOGdVYmlmem1yeTUwQT09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

The role of the practitioner within academia is both challenging and rewarding.  To teach and to conduct research- and artistic development within one’s own praxis in higher education can possibly change the approach to one’s own creative process, to audiences and to the field itself, resulting in an artistic output that might differ from what one originally intended or anticipated. Understanding this – even coming to terms with it – is perhaps one of the greatest challenges any artist entering academia might encounter. In addition, there is also the notion of academicization, projecting an (often) distorted image of what could possibly happen if our practices were to be engulfed by theory. Illustration and comics are two separate cultural fields that quite recently have entered academia, both sharing the common denominator of drawing. In this presentation we will give our view on how our own artistic praxis, teaching, research, and artistic development have interacted and what it has resulted in.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Magnus Nilsson, Professor in Comparative Literature, K3.

The title of the seminar is Literature in the municipal workers’ trade-union journal in 1970.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, April 7 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/67726298135?pwd=L3BFMElMN3E2M0p6M1VvYU5ad1ZWdz09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar. If you would like a copy of a draft version of the essay to be discussed, please mail Magnus at Magnus.Nilsson@mau.se.

At the seminar I will give a short presentation of my ongoing research about literature in the Swedish trade-union press, and of an essay I’m writing for the edited collection Working Class Literatures: National and International Traditions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries that will hopefully be published by Palgrave McMillan (actually, I’m not only a contributor, but also one of the editors). The essay analyses the literary material in the Swedish municipal workers trade union membership magazine until 1970 (with a special focus on that year). My main argument is that the literature published there constitutes an important but hitherto neglected strand of Swedish working-class literature. I am very much interested in all kinds of feedback on the essay, not the least since I am considering to continue researching literature in the trade-union press, and perhaps write a book on the topic.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Anne-Marie Hansen, Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design, K3. It is a seminar organized jointly with the research platform Collaborative Future-Making.

The title of the seminar is ”we know so much, but we have not learned to use knowledge wisely”.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, March 31 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66588828359?pwd=eVE0VCtwOG9Na3N5T3ZkOFdLc2xrUT09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

Anne-Marie will present a draft of a paper that she wrote together with Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, a shaman from Greenland. The paper is titled “we know so much, but we have not learned to use knowledge wisely”. We submitted it to the NORDES conference 2021. Anne-Marie will share excerpts from the interview that she did with Angaangaq. In the paper, we share an invitation to join and learn from an open educational resource (OER) that shows the wisdom traditions of the world. In a conversation with a traditional healer and shaman from Greenland, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Anne-Marie asked, if it is possible to learn from the wisdom traditions, and from the salient qualities in the aesthetic forms in wisdom practices, when designing for new communities of practice (CoP) in urban environments. We emphasize the importance of the learnings from nature that happened through thousands of years, and that have been incorporated in the wisdom traditions. Through several stories presented, some of which Anne-Marie will share in the research seminar, we look at how we might address the problematic relationship between people in the West and the indigenous peoples of the world. We claim that a process of mutual learning is needed in order to transition into sustainable ways of life – for all.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Sara Bjärstorp and Petra Ragnerstam, both Senior Lecturers in English Studies.

The title of the seminar is Social media and larp. An investigation into interactions between social media and an embodied, material cultural expression.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, March 24 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/67028483636?pwd=K1FISkg5WGk4Q0FvQ0lXWm1FK0hhQT09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar.

Live-action role-playing (larp) is characterized by participants’ physical and mental immersion in a storyworld. Most immersion is realized during the larp event itself, where a collective story is acted out in physical space in real time. However, contemporary larping also usually entails significant interaction and communication between players, and between players and organisers, before and after the event itself, through digital media. In this seminar, we will discuss the social media preambles and afterlife of one of the most significant Nordic larp events in recent years, Fortune and Felicity (2017). Using an affordance framework, we explore what happens to the “liveness” of the larp when it is extended into social media. Through the affordances of persistence, visibility, scalability, replicability, editability and associability, we analyse material from different Facebook groups associated with Fortune and Felicity, used by players and organisers to prepare for the larp and, afterwards, to continue the gameplay and to de-brief. In social media, the continuum of time and space, which is characteristic of the larp event itself, is changed into asynchronous and physically separate player action. Thus the affordances of social media, we argue, enable player interaction and collaborative storytelling in ways that change the narrative, interactive and reflective dynamics of the larp.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Sara Gottschalk, PhD candidate in Interaction Design.

The title of the seminar is Controversy mapping Sege park. Thinking with controversies in an urban development project. It will be Sara’s 25 percent PhD seminar. Karin Grundström, Professor in Architecture, Urban Studies, Malmö University, will function as discussant.

This will be an online seminar, carried out through Zoom, and it will take place on Wednesday, March 17 at 10.15-12.00. Please join here: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/67093123910?pwd=bEo4UG5oczlWVytHaitxdjBZRzFIUT09.

Below is an abstract for the seminar. If you would like to read Sara’s manuscript, please contact her at sara.gottschalk@mau.se.

For this seminar I will present and discuss my initial case-study, Controversy mapping Sege Park, initiated in 2020, and still work-in-progress. My research follows a programmatic approach with the perspective of strategic design for sustainability. My own understanding of sustainability resonates with strong sustainability, which stipulates environmental sustainability as the fundamental system for every natural and human system. The human system in focus for this case study is urban development understood as our designed living environment*. The program is conducted through independent studies with overlapping focuses, responding to the overall research question of (1) How does the making of the designed living environment interpret and perform sustainability? And (2) how can strategic design contribute to strong sustainability of our designed living environment? The initial phase of the Sege Park case-study, conducted during 2020, has essentially focused on research question one. To follow up on the second question, strategic design and system thinking will be used to elaborate on alternatives. This will be followed up with a second study using collaborative design approaches together with strategic design and eco-centric perspectives, to encourage citizenship engagement in urban development. 

Controversy mapping Sege Park: In a sense, Sege Park, as a place does not yet exist, mere than as a vision of being the City of Malmö’s next spearhead of sustainable urban development. This is a case-study of the transformative process of the former Eastern hospital becoming a sustainable residential area. The activity of controversy mapping has been central for collecting and structuring the collected material. To understand the project in its process I have structured the controversy mapping around a timeline. The term controversy mapping has been coined by Albena Yaneva, professor in architectural theory, as a practical-didactic method developed from Bruno Latour´s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The method aims to follows a controversy us it unfolds in-the-process. The method follows three steps, (1) following, (2) mapping (3) and visualising the controversy. In this seminar I will briefly present the method, some controversies found in the case study, and the process of making a timeline of the Sege Park project. This is work-in-progress, and I position my own process still iterating between all three steps.

By engaging with the case-study of Sege Park through ethnographic methods, thick description and controversy mapping of interpretations of sustainability, this research tangent other research fields such as system thinking, urban planning, environmental humanities and geohumanities. By operating on a systemic level by using the notion of ‘our designed living environment*, I kindly invite all participants to discuss how to further unpack and develop design research from such perspectives?

*The concept designed living environment comes from the Swedish political proposition: Politics for the designed living environment, (Prop. 2017/2018:110 Politik för gestaltad livsmiljö, my translation), presenting the Swedish general policy with targets for architecture, design and public art.