THIS WEEK: New research from the University of Ibadan 

In this session, speakers from the University of Ibadan will share research they’ve been conducting in Media and Cultural Studies.

1600-1730 Wednesday 18 April
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link

Prof. Ayobami Ojebode (University of Ibadan) – Power to the Powerful, Not to the People: Explaining the Variation in Online Reactions to Chibok and Dapchi Schoolgirls’ Abductions in Nigeria

Prof. Nkechi M. Christopher (University of Ibadan) –  Assessing the influence of journalists’ role perception on the development of investigative journalism in Nigeria

Dr. Olusola O. Oyewo (University of Ibadan) – Teaching Business Journalism in the West African Sub- Region and its implication for uniformity/global standards

Dr. Beatrice A. Laninhun (University of Ibadan) – Exploring Advertising to Children across Cultures

Dr. Olayinka A. Egbokhare (University of Ibadan) – Analysing the Reportage of Yoruba News on Gender Based Violence – a study of selected Radio Stations in Ibadan. (Co Researcher- Abiola Odejide, PhD Emeritus Professor)

About the speakers:
Ayobami Ojebode
 is Professor of Applied Communication in the Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His research interests are community communication; community governance; new media; and political communication. His works have been published in reputable outlets in many countries. Professor Ojebode has been a visiting researcher, a visiting scholar, a keynote speaker, a consultant, a trainer and/or examiner in universities and research institutes in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Peru and the United States. Since 2014, he has been facilitating and coordinating advanced research methods workshops for researchers from all over Africa organised biannually by the Partnership for African Social Governance Research (PASGR) in Kenya. (ayo.ojebode@gmail.com)

Nkechi M. Christopher PhD, Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria teaches, researches and supervises studies in Communication and Language Arts, and is a book publishing expert and a literacy development enthusiast. Internationally, she taught English for two sessions (2013–2015) in King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah (KSA), has presented papers at conferences and has published in reputable journals. Locally, she successfully initiated and coordinated a six-month synthetic phonics trial sponsored by THRASS UK (2009), organised the 1st Mid-term Conference of the Reading Association of Nigeria (RAN) in 2007, among other sponsored activities and events. She became a full professor of her university with effect from October 2014 by a February 2018 pronouncement. (nmxtopher@gmail.com)

Dr Oyewo holds a PhD in Organisational Communication with focus on the informal network of relationship, Rumour within the organisation. He has been a university teacher for the past 21 years teaching courses which include Introduction to Human Communication Systems, Business/Organisational Communication, Comparative Media Systems, Investigative journalism, group communication system etc. He is a member of the Forum of African Media Educators under the auspices of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He is also a Fellow of the Certified Institute of Marketing Communications in Nigeria. He is a consultant to various agencies including: UNICEF, Federal Ministries of Health, Information and Education. He is currently a Reader in the Department of Communication and Language Arts and has publications in reputable academic journals, both local and international. He has also supervised to completion, 8 PhD holders, and another two who are also at advanced stages in their research.

Beatrice Adeyinka Laninhun (PhD) teaches in the Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Her teaching and research interests include marketing communications, speech communication, broadcast presentation and gender studies. She is a Fellow of the Certified Marketing Communications Institute of Nigeria, Member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, associate registered practitioner in Advertising and Member, African Council for Communication Education, Nigeria Chapter, among others. She was a visiting scholar to CAMRI, University of Westminster, United Kingdom. She has published in reputable international journals including Legon Journal of the Humanities, Third Sector Review, and Postmodernism problems.

Olayinka Abimbola Egbokhare holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D in Communication and Language Arts University of Ibadan. She teaches and conducts research in Gender Studies, Marketing Communications, Health Advocacy and Promotions. She is the author of Dazzling Mirage, a novel which has been adapted for the big screen. She is presently on the Commonwealth Rutherford Fellowship at the Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick. She uses her creative writing skills for message development for Mental Health, Maternal Health and Preventing Mother to Child Transmission of HIV. She also works with Youths and partners with different organizations on issues relating to young people. She speaks in schools and public fora on literacy, health promotions and gender sensitization (especially the prevention of gender- based violence). As a gender focal person for University of Ibadan, she was on the team that developed the institutions’ Gender Policy and Sexual Harassment Policy.

SEMINAR SERIES| Sid Peacock on ‘Surge in Spring’

As a way of exploring cultural translation in jazz, Sid Peacock presented Surge in Spring as an example of the way a jazz festival might lend itself to a melting pot of cultural influences.

This video will give you both a flavour of the festival and a window into the way it is saturated with examples of cultural translation. It’s a marvellous example of the way in which a cultural form such as jazz serves as the medium for creativity and cultural transformation.

Thanks, Sid, for allow us to share the video.

THIS WEEK: Nick Hall and Andrew Flinn on ‘Public History and Historical Reconstruction’

BCMCR Research Seminar | History, Heritage and Archives
Archives, Public History and Historical Reconstruction
1600-1730 Wednesday 21 March
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link

Dr. Nick Hall (Royal Holloway) – ADAPT: Using hands-on technological simulation to communicate television’s clockwork past to future digital users

The tools required to make and share moving images are ubiquitous in the developed world. Smartphones and high-speed wireless internet connections enable users to shoot video and share the results globally. The ease and speed of the digital age has multiplied the potential producers and audiences of video. Similar technological changes have changed the television industry beyond recognition: digital tapeless acquisition and desktop editing are now dominant technologies across genres.

Television production has always been somewhat opaque to audiences, but the recent growth in portable consumer video recording technology further obscures the mechanical and manual foundations of television production practice. As recently as the 1960s, a great deal of television footage was shot and recorded using clockwork film cameras, magnetic audio recorders, and analogue video tape. Shows were edited by hand with the aid of a wide range of mechanical editing aids. Assistant editors performed complex jobs now simplified by non-linear editing software suites such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.

In the age of digital cameras and desktop video editing, the manual work of television production is at risk of being forgotten. Analogue technologies and workflows are increasingly incomprehensible to new generations raised on the smartphone and tablet. To remedy this, ADAPT – a five year research project funded by the European Research Council and led by Prof. John Ellis at Royal Holloway, University of London – is carrying out extensive research designed to capture and animate the hidden histories of historic television production.

ADAPT’s central innovation is to carry out a series of simulations in order to show how arrays of technological devices were used by teams of skilled professionals to make, edit, and broadcast television in the United Kingdom between 1960 and 2010. The project reunites teams of veteran television personnel – including camera operators, sound recordists, and film editors – with obsolete equipment, and captures the results as the subjects re-encounter equipment they have not used for decades.

This presentation will include footage captured during recent simulation exercise, which demonstrate how 16mm television footage was shot and edited during the 1960s. The presentation will address the manifold opportunities and methodological challenges associated with this novel mode of “hands-on” oral history, and consider the ways in which memories of past television production may be translated and interpreted for contemporary audiences.

Dr. Andrew Flinn (UCL) – Digging Where We Stand: community-based archives & participatory approaches to archiving and knowledge production

Drawing upon the speaker’s extensive experience of working with community archives and study of participatory knowledge productive practices this talk will contend that the history and practice of community-based archives suggests that rather than centres for preservation of culture many of these participatory approaches represent an activist agenda of use and knowledge production. The talk will use the framework of Lindqvist’s Dig Where You Stand manifesto and examples of social movement approaches to archiving and the useful past to illustrate the motivations, objectives and activities of both mainly physical and digital archives. The talk will conclude by raising some questions about the challenges and future of these participatory archives.

About the speakers:

Dr. Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archive Studies and Oral History at University College London and author, recently of ‘Working with the past: making history of struggle part of the struggle’ in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History’s Schools, eds Choudry & Vally (2018).

 Dr. Nick Hall is a research officer in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway (University of London). He works on on the ADAPT project which examines the historical development of British television broadcast production technology. His research specialisms include early postwar American television history and cinematography and British postwar television history. A book based on his research into the history of the zoom lens in American film and television – The Zoom: Drama at the Touch of a Lever will be published by Rutgers University Press in 2018. www.zoomlenshistory.org.uk.

Welcome to the BCMCR Cultural Translation Research Blog

Over the coming months we will use this blog to capture a range of approaches to the topic of cultural translation.

 What is cultural translation?

A good question. In the most general of terms, cultural translation might be seen as the process through which culture moves from one particular place, language or time to another, whether that means a literal translation (from one language to another) or a more metaphorical transposition (say, across national borders). But as Maitland (2017) notes, the definition is far from settled. For our working definition, go here.

Part of the work this blog will undertake is exploring how the concept is useful in Media and Cultural research, what sort of thinking can be done when we attend to cultural translation, and what questions are raised by it.

The blog will aim to:

1.       provide an up-to-date library of work that looks at issues of cultural translation by BCU scholars.

2.       catalogue the seminar series as it unfolds, with perspectives and comments posted week by week.

3.       invite thinkers from around the world to comment on how cultural translation impacts their work.

4.       allow the public to engage with the BCMCR seminar series and involve them in the wider debates we’re having here.

To keep this short, we’ll just say that we welcome comments, thoughts and engagement from academics, arts practitioners and members of the public alike. We’re looking forward to exploring cultural translation over the course of this project. Watch this space!

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Maitland, Sarah. What is cultural translation?. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.