Project No 7: Transnational Media Histories

MQ-FU-HAM Trilateral Strategic Network Project extension of the Transnational Media Histories project

The goals of the ‘Transnational Media Histories’ project are to extend research on media history beyond national boundaries and to enable transnational research from a globally ‘entangled’ perspective. The project has been linked to work on ‘entangled media histories’, drawing on and contributing to histoire croisée, connected history, and Verflechtungsgeschichte in the field of media and communication studies, and enabling intermedial research. ‘Transnational Media Histories’ has received recognition as an important network in several countries, and become part of relevant international initiatives in this field. A series of conferences, symposia, film screenings, classes and media interviews have facilitated this. The exchange programme between Hamburg and Sydney has also been a success. The extension of the network to a third vibrant partner, University of Fudan, with both common and diverse research strengths is enabling the Transnational Media Histories project to establish sustainable measures for cooperation in this emerging field research, and to write transnational media history. Extending the project to Fudan has allowed co-operation between three key sites in the northern and southern hemispheres.

In 2019-20, we will collaborate to conceptualise and devise an English-based digital platform or 'environment' for exploring and researching ‘Transnational Media Histories’ and new writing in this field (around the theme of the port city and media archive 'objects'). We envisage a first stage digital space overseen by scholars at our universities, with a framework and digital architecture for the platform developed. Longer term goals are to develop this to Beta stage by 2021 - 2023 and involve further our third collaborator, The Center for Information and Communication Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.