Call for Participants: ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School

We are happy to invite you to participate in the ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School 2009 in Tartu, Estonia from 2 – 15 August 2009.

The ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School 2009 brings together members of the European research community to this summer school in order to debate contemporary issues in media, communication and cultural studies. The main emphasis of this summer school is on providing structural and individuated PhD-support for young European scholars, through a variety of working forms, including feedback seminars, workshops, and lectures. The summer school aims to provide a supportive international setting where doctoral students can present their ongoing work, receive feedback on their PhD-projects from international experts and meet students and academics from other countries, establishing valuable contacts for the future. The summer school also generates a clear picture of the international landscape of communication and media research, and its diversity of academic cultures, allowing PhD-students to situate themselves within this academic field.

The overall theme for the programme: Ethnoscapes, cultural diversity and media in an enlarged Europe provides one of the structures of the summer school. As this summer school is open to the full variety of academic work in the field of communication and media studies, the summer school theme will not be used as a criterion for participant selection. All PhD projects within the field of communication and media studies are welcomed. The theme is to be understood through wide range of contemporary media and communication related research. The enlargement of Europe has generated vast number of societal changes. At the level of media and communication, the enlargement has brought even more media organizations, journalistic practices and cultures, formats, traditions and media styles. The thrust towards the knowledge society has various effects on the everyday life of European citizens, their participation in societal activities and media consumption and production. To facilitate the successful, continuous and democratic European integration, media have a vital role to play.

The summer school will take place in the premises of University of Tartu, at the Institute of Journalism and Communication.

There are three options possible to attend the summer school:
1. For students whose universities are a member of the organizing consortium (see list below) the fee for the summer school will be 430 euros. 75% of (cheapest possible) travel costs to the summer school location (Tartu) taking into account the maximum eligible costs set by Erasmus IP (see travel costs table URL) will also be refunded to the participating students. In order to get the refund, students will have to send in their original boarding passes and tickets, travel agent invoices and receipts to the summer school coordinator no later than 25 August 2009 (date of stamp). Otherwise no refund will be provided.
2. For individual or institutional ECREA members (see http://www.ecrea.eu), the fee will be 490 euros. This fee will not cover the travel costs.

Summer school materials (including 2 books), accommodation, breakfast, coffee and lunches are included in all the options.

Additionally there will be 2 grants provided to students who are unable to otherwise raise registration and travel fee. There is a separate application and selection procedure in order to apply for these grants (see Link Grants).

The deadline for applications for the summer school is April 20. A wide range of student papers is sought for, and it is not necessary to fit into the yearly theme of the doctoral summer school. The working language of the summer school will be English; therefore sufficient understanding and ability to express oneself in this language is expected.

When applying, each interested student is expected fill out a form (the link can be found in the left hand menu) on the summer school website. Prior registration on the website is necessary. (The approval of the website account may take up to 2-3 days.) Uncompleted applications will not be eligible. Applications can only be submitted via the summer school website (http://www.comsummerschool.org).
This application form will include:
1/ a short CV according to the provided forms
2/ an abstract of their PhD project (no more than 400 words, with a structure and contents of their choosing)

The abstracts of all successful applicants will also be published in the summer school book (see the summer school website for an online version of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 books www.researchingcommunication.eu). Students are therefore requested to pay close attention that all details of their abstracts are correct and that proper English is used. Students will have possibility to update their information during the application procedure, thus early submission is encouraged.

Notification of the accepted students will come in early May. Accepted students should start making their travel arrangements as soon as possible to ensure the lowest price.

Details of the summer school programme will be updated regularly based on the draft programme available on the web. The 2008 progamme can be regarded as an example of the lecturers that will possibly attend and as the structure of the summer school.

Students whose abstracts are accepted will then (in a second phase) be expected to provide the following documents and information:

1. A 10-page (3000 words) paper on their PhD project as a whole. The 10 page paper should be a report of the student’s ongoing doctoral research and not a conventional conference paper or a report of findings. Rather, it is expected that the student will briefly present the focus of the research and then take up aspects of the research process: methodological, theoretical and practical issues on which he/she would like to receive feedback. (Deadline: June 15)

2. A set of questions (maximum 1 page) with questions or problems that students would like to be discussed during the workshops. This one page needs to be part of the same Word/PDF file that also contains the 10-page paper. (Deadline: June 15)

3. Based on the abstracts and titles of other student papers, everyone is expected to choose up to 3 papers they would be interested in being a respondent. This preference will be taken into consideration while setting up student working groups. (Deadline July 1)

By the time of the summer school, each student has to prepare a 10-minute seminar presentation covering the main points of their work. Each student is also expected to actively participate in the discussions of their own and other people’s work. As mentioned above, they will act as a respondent of someone else’s paper. In order to ensure maximum benefits of the seminars, everyone will have to read other participants papers before the summer school.

The total number of students will be limited to 45, up to 35 from consortium members and 10 additional students through ECREA.

All questions concerning the application procedure and other information can be directed to the Co-ordinators of the Summer School to:

Ilija Tomanić for application, programme and content related matters (ilija.tomanic@fdv.uni-lj.si) and
Triin Visnapuu for practical and organizational matters (triinvp@ut.ee).

The Programme Committee members are: Prof. Nico Carpentier, Prof. Maren Hartmann, Prof. Kaarle Nordenstreng, Dr. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Prof. Slavko Splichal and Prof. Peeter Vihalemm.

The Intensive Programme is supported by Socrates Erasmus IP project contract number: 69935-IC-1-2007-EE-ERASMUS-EUC-1, the European Communication Research and Education Association (http://www.ecrea.eu), the University of Tartu, the Institute of Journalism and Communication (http://www.jrnl.ut.ee) and a consortium of 22 partners universities:

• University of Bremen DE,
• Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) HU,
• University of Roskilde DK,
• University of Tampere FI,
• Lund University SE,
• University of Arts Berlin DE,
• Charles University CZ,
• University of Ankara TR,
• University of Ljubljana SI,
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel BE,
• University of Stirling UK,
• University of Erfurt DE,
• University of Bergen NO,
• Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) LT,
• Jönköping University SE,
• University of Sacred Heart Milano IT,
• University on Helsinki FI,
• University Stendhal, Grenoble 3 FR,
• London School of Economics & Political Science UK,
• University of Amsterdam (UvA) NL,
• University of Westminster UK,
• Autnonmous University of Barcelona ES and 2 national research schools - Danish National Research School and Finnish national research school.