Call For Papers

Motivation
How can “transmedia” history be put into practice from both theoretical and empirical perspectives? The international conference “Transmedia History”—organised by the Impresso project and the University of Lausanne’s History Department—will gather scholars from various backgrounds around this question to exchange views on new prospects opened by digitisation and digital tools to carry out transmedia research.

Media history is composed of a myriad of parallel histories, which makes comparisons difficult (Fickers 2018, 121). Research in the field has indeed long focused on single types of media (newspapers, television, radio, …) or single institutions within their national contexts. In the mid-2000s however, the transnational turn—which spread across all historical disciplines—allowed for new trends in research objectives to emerge (Bourdon 2008; Vallotton and Nicoli 2021). Research scopes overcame previous temporal and spatial frameworks and thereby became less driven by institutional perspectives than by contents and their circulation. Moreover, this new focus on transnational perspectives enlarged its scope to encompass a wider range of topics within media studies, such as technologies and communication. The development of the history of communication, cultural industries, techniques, and international relations all contributed to a form of décloisonnement or decompartmentalisation, that paved the way for a more comprehensive history of media systems (Mattelart 2002). These new approaches were made possible most notably by mass digitisation of media sources and the improvement of their online accessibility to researchers. International research networks gathered around such transnational ambitions. The first engaged with the history of the book (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing - SHARP) and the history of television (European Television History Network - ETHN, (Post)Socialist Television History Network), while, later on, other groups broached the radio (Transnational Radio Encounters - TRE) and the press (Transnational Network for the Study of the Press in Foreign Languages - Transfopress). The transnational turn was a major breakthrough that resulted in important publications (see for example Mollier and Lyon 2012 for the book; Fickers and Johnson 2012 for the television; Badenoch, Fickers and Henrich-Franke 2013 for radio and a global history of French-speaking press which is currently in the making).

It remains, however, that research in media history continues to face borders it has not managed to cross yet: beyond geographical borders, those between media institutions and between different types of media remain mostly uncrossed (Cronqvist and Hilgert 2017, 134). This challenge gave the impulse for the establishment of the Entangled Media Histories (EMHIS) network in 2013. In a milestone article published in 2017, Marie Cronqvist and Christoph Hilgert—both members of EMHIS—defined the concept of entangled histories “as a means of better understanding the dynamic interconnectedness of media across semiotic, technological, institutional and political boundaries in history” (Cronqvist et Hilgert 2017, 130). Rather than accumulating histories of different media, they advocated for a focus on the elements that bridge them. This idea has a certain genealogy (Müller 2000) and theoretical debates have also broached the matter. This perspective was indeed articulated in different ways depending on the historical subdiscipline (global history, history of communications, history of techniques, history of cultural industries that incorporate sociological methods, etc.) and the national and linguistic areas. Despite this, a lack of empirical studies persists, primarily due to the enduring division of knowledge and the practical challenges associated with navigating separate, multilingual archives. These factors discourage research that moves beyond compartmentalised, sector-specific approaches. With the exception of a handful of significant works (see most notably Daniel, de Lima Grecco, Tamagne and Zierenberg 2023), monomedia perspectives still dominate the field of media history and too little research is being carried out on exchanges and cooperation between media.

This international conference aims to extend those efforts and reflections by inviting papers that prioritise a “transmedia” approach. We seek to present research that explores media history through the simultaneous analysis of different media, thereby emphasising the significance of the media ecosystems in which they co-evolve. A variety of terms have been used in fields like art history, narratology, journalism and communication to explore the interconnectedness of media (cross-media, intermedia, transmedia, etc.). With regards to history, it has occurred to us that “transmedia”—first used in narratology (Jenkins 2006)—was most suited to capture our ambition. We believe that it encompasses the study of various forms of circulation that occur between media (institutional, economic, technological, aesthetic, or content level). In this sense, we argue that “transmedia” refers with greater accuracy to our objective of transcending monomedia units.

“Media” is understood in a broad sense here. It includes traditional media (books, posters, press, cinema, radio and television), but also recent ones such as video games, the Internet (e.g. streaming services, podcasts, online news) and social media. The targeted timeframe is extensive, spanning up to the present day. The conference ultimately seeks to present papers that contribute to a decompartmentalised and interconnected history of media. These papers will not only place media history within a broader social, political, and cultural context but also foster a dialogue among them.

In this regard, we invite papers that fall within three main research axes:

1. Transmedia circulations, adaptations and reciprocal influences
Media history, which was also strongly influenced by the cultural turn of the 1970s and 1980s, has gradually expanded the range of media objects studied and the actors involved (Ruppen Coutaz and Vallotton 2019). The concepts of cultural transfer (Spain and Werner 1988) and acculturation (Dulphy, Frank, Matard-Bonucci and Ory 2010) have proved useful in understanding the international circulation of media productions, which is now increasingly being studied (Mattelart 2014). Such approaches highlight the importance of mediators (Cooper-Richet, Mollier and Silem 2005; Sapiro 2012) and the creation of new transnational circulation spaces.

The aim of this initial strand of research is to identify and analyse various factors that facilitate the circulation of content and formats across media and/or that foster interactions between media:
- specific actors or media professions such as news and advertising agencies, foreign correspondents, exiles and diaspora representatives active in various media, translators, arrangers, cross-border media;
- -technological innovations like the telegraph, printing technologies, digital platforms or alternate reality games;
- spaces of circulation and exchanges that transcend traditional political and/or linguistic boundaries, such as fictional serial productions, co-productions, joint-broadcasts, technical cooperation associations in the telecommunications field, foreign-language press;
- socio-economic factors like concentration and financial globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation, convergence and new consumption habits.
It will also involve considering the rhythms and temporality of information, the modes of circulation (e.g. scissors-and-paste journalism), adaptations and reconfigurations (e.g. comics to radio), as well as the transmission of practices and the mobility of people. Finally, it will be important to investigate resistance to these phenomena, in the sense of factors that hinder or trouble transmedia circulation (seasonal and geopolitical conditions, legal matters, censorship, etc.).

2. Intersections, reconfigurations and new media genealogies
Traditionally, media history has viewed the advent of new distribution channels as significant ruptures per se marking the beginning of life cycles, each eventually bound to a certain downfall. Against this backdrop, new perspectives rooted in the new media history (Marvin 1990; Gitelman 2006) and media archaeology (Parikka 2012) provided counterpoints. Some have emphasised the relevance of synchronic approaches to study global transformations in the media system, as instanced by the “invention” of the telephone and, more broadly, by the evolution of images transmission. Others have put forth diachronic perspectives. In this vein, the notion of “live” transmission—which had been used to draw a line between television and cinema—provided an entry point for the exploration of media history through the lens of interdependence and competition. Likewise, analyses of “media imaginaries” (imaginaires médiatiques) acknowledged new periodisations that considered, for example, the presence of prophetic literary representations in communication or the recycling of media devices bound to disappear.

The goal set by this second strand of research is to provide a refined understanding of how media define themselves in relation to each other. Additionally, it seeks to shine light upon their strategies and motives, in order to appreciate better the complex ties that they maintain (Lits 2005; Letourneux 2017). How was the advent of new media perceived, announced and narrated by existing media? How do media publicise, promote and criticise other media’s content? We aim to identify productions and documentary resources that reflect such intertwined relations, such as anticipation tales, criticism in the press, advertising productions, etc. From a broader viewpoint, these considerations also address the evolution of mentalities towards new media, their gradual integration within the media ecosystem, as well as the reconfigurations of the latter.

3. New approaches, resources and methods
In what ways can the mass digitisation of archival collections and the advancement of computational analysis tools foster transmedia research? Computational research methods allow processing large volumes of data and in recent times also increasingly across languages and modalities (e.g. image, text, sound) (Arnold et al. 2021; Smits and Wevers 2023). Techniques such as text reuse detection (Salmi et al. 2020; Düring et al. 2023; Rosson et al. 2023) or the representation of textual elements in multilingual dense vector spaces (embeddings) (Reimers and Gurevych 2019) have been shown to serve large-scale comparisons and content exploration. But how exactly can computational approaches contribute to the advancement of a transmedia media history?

The third axis of this conference aims to identify (new and/or digital approaches that facilitate and bolster comparisons. Besides, it seeks to discuss methods which enable analyses of the circulation of contents and formats at scale, in order to enhance our understanding of information fluxes (Lundell, Hannu et alii 2023). Until recently, most projects that embraced data-driven approaches focused on a single media, mostly the press (see for instance Viral Texts Project, Oceanic Exchanges, Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finlande (COMHIS) or Information Highways of the 19th Century. Research now starts to explore how to set up the processing—and how to conduct the analysis—of transmedia data; projects in the likes of TwiXL: An infrastructure for cross-media research on public debates, Clariah Media Suite and Impresso - Media Monitoring of the Past II all welcomed this goal. We therefore look to understand the effects that the use of digital tools and methodologies has on the research practices of media historians (changes in scale, shifts between close and distant reading). More broadly, we want to question how the facilitated exploration of media sources affects the way we carry out historical research, especially in the field of media history (changing relation to sources, cross-fertilisation of research fields, emergence of new objects of study, new ways of presenting results, etc.). In doing so, we seek to assess the added value of digital tools for media history (Weber, Comte and Vallotton 2023).

By embracing a transmedia approach, papers gathered for this conference will:
- showcase shared, entangled histories, as well as differences and lesser-known relations and connections between media;
- discuss the application of novel methods and tools to conduct historical research and ground a theoretical and empirical reflection on complex interactions between media;
- enhance the global understanding of media ecosystem dynamics.
This conference seeks to contribute to the clarification and development of a transmedia approach in the historical sciences. It aims to address transmedia from a historical, long-term perspective and, more broadly, to promote a decompartmentalised, entangled history of media. We therefore encourage presentations from junior and senior researchers who wish to share their empirical and methodological approaches in this field.

Practical information
The conference will be held at the University of Lausanne. Remote participation (via Zoom) will be possible only if absolutely necessary and on explicit request.

Working languages at the conference will be English and French. All speakers are kindly requested to prepare slides in the other language to accompany their talk. We strive to publish selected papers in the form of a special issue in a media history journal.

If speakers’ home institutions cannot cover travel and accommodation costs, partial or full support may be available depending on the number of requests. Please submit an explicit request for this funding. Priority will be given to junior researchers.

Submission procedure and important dates
July 15, 2024: Proposals must be submitted via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=transmedia2025

Proposals (max. 350 words) should include a title, a clear outline of the research question, a bibliography (max. 5 references); please add a short bio-bibliographical note (max. 150 words) and a note as to whether or not you intend to travel to Lausanne. In EasyChair, please use the “Title and abstract” section to upload your plain text proposal: the abstract, its references and the bio–bibliographical note can be inserted in the same field. No need to produce a PDF document.

Early September, 2024: Notification of acceptance after a selection process conducted with the help of the Scientific Committee members.

December 13, 2024: Those interested in taking part in the publication project submit a paper of circa 6,000 words to be forwarded to the organisers and panel discussants.

January 27-28, 2025: International conference at the University of Lausanne.

April 1, 2025: Submission of final versions of papers selected for publication.

Organisation committee
Raphaëlle Ruppen Coutaz, Section d’histoire, Université de Lausanne
François Vallotton, Section d’histoire, Université de Lausanne
Marten Düring, C²DH, Université du Luxembourg
Martin Grandjean, Section d’histoire, Université de Lausanne
Arthur Michelet, Section d’histoire, Université de Lausanne

Please contact Martin Grandjean (martin.grandjean@unil.ch) for any questions related to this call for papers.

Research topic for Visegrad Scholarship at Open Society Archives
Academic year 2024/2025

The Language(s) of Freedom(s)

The criticism about infringements of academic freedom, or about the radicalization of autocratic powers cannot do without an understanding of the loaded vocabularies of freedoms in the past and present, for both societies and their elites. A complex rethinking and recontextualization of the thinkers of liberties, including from the Cold War era, must also be undertaken, together with the truth-seeking adventures and projects from the past.

We invite historians, researchers, political scientists, sociologists and socially engaged artists to reflect on the past uses of the languages of (attaining) freedoms by taking cues from the Blinken OSA collections. The applicants are encouraged to reflect on the connections as well as on the differences between current times and the past by following some recommended sub-topics listed below.

-the contribution to Eastern European intellectuals and dissenters to political philosophy in the past and present, the relevance and afterlife of their insights [clues: personal collections of Eastern European oppositionist and the RFE collections regarding their activities]

-the comparative and different understandings of what constituted authorship and censorship

-independentist movements in the 90s: the complex interplay of nationalism, decolonization, political freedoms and their impact nowadays [clues: curated collection Winning Freedom, Ukraine 1989-1991 https://ukraine.89-91.osaarchivum.org/ and similar collections from the Soviet Red Archives, Samizdat archives, Western Press Archives]

-the representation and analysis of citizens’ aspirations within the communist regimes by internal and external observers; what was the understanding of political freedoms in relationship with other rights? [clue: the collection of audience and opinion surveys done by RFE and RL]

-the fascination with the revolution and social movements among the Western intellectuals and the communist parties within the non-communist countries; self-reflexivity with regards the nature of real existing socialism [clue: Kevin Devlin collection]

-the different meanings of freedom in the East and the West, and the transformation brought by the human rights paradigm

-the complex status of the alternative movements and artistic phenomena within centralized socialist systems (from gray zones to radical opposition); the transformative meaning they gave to an official lexicon through their concern with “peace,” “futures,” etc.

-the dysfunctional relationship between language and meaning and the ensuing concern for truth within different intellectual and scientific communities

- the language of transnational politics in the 70s and the adaptation of local political visions to the language of Western liberatory international organizations (ILO, Helsinki institutions, Amnesty international), etc.

-discursive strategies of Cold War observers, theorists and activists:

-the usage of the term totalitarianism, analytical term or discursive mechanism revived by the transnational activism and history writing in the 70s and 1980s (a situation re-emerging now?)

-the role of “liberatory” Western radios within the Cold War: political impact, protective strategies towards endangered oppositionist, documentation of issues then and now

-What have was or could be achieved by preserving records documenting rights abuses? A critical assessment of and ways of repurposing human rights archiving in times of democratic backsliding.

Blinken OSA Archivum research program
The current call is part of a reflexive-research program at Blinken OSA Archivum interested in connecting past issues related to oppressive regimes, censorship, violence and information manipulation to current phenomena. We would like to assess the potential of a genealogical project linking the contemporary epistemic and political crisis of democracy to past modes of inquiry and activism.

Admission
We seek to promote exchanges among people with backgrounds in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the way they think through and about archives while being concerned with current problems. From this point of view, the invitation is addressed to all scholars interested in theories of knowledge, who would use Blinken OSA Archivum documents as props for larger reflections and activist concerns.

Fellowship requirements and Blinken OSA Archivum support
While working on their own subject, fellows will have the opportunity to collaborate with Blinken OSA Archivum researchers and to transform their archival investigation into a full research experience. The fellows are invited to give a final presentation about their research findings at Blinken OSA Archivum and the ways in which the documents were relevant to their research. The presentations are organized within the Visegrad Scholarship at Blinken OSA Archivum lecture series and as such are open for the general public.
Blinken OSA Archivum academic and archival staff will assist the fellows in their investigations, facilitate contact with the CEU community, and grant access to the CEU library. Besides its archival analogue collections, Blinken OSA Archivum can also offer access to unique, audio-visual materials related to documentary practices, a special collection of RFE (anti)propaganda books and a growing collection on digital humanities, human rights, archival theory and philosophy.

About the Fellowship
The twenty grants of 3000 euro each are designed to provide access to the archives for scholars, artists, and journalists, and to cover travel to and from Budapest, a modest subsistence, and accommodation for a research period of eight weeks. Stipends for shorter periods are pro-rated.

Applicants, preferably but not exclusively, from a V4 country, may be researchers, students after their second degree carrying out research, or artists, journalists, academics, or both.
Scholars at risk from war zones as well as refugees of conscience (scholars fleeing authoritarian regimes) are especially invited to apply.

Submission deadlines for the 2024/25 academic year
• July 25, 2024
• November 15, 2024

Assessment
The Selection Committee will evaluate proposals on the strength of the professional quality and novelty of the research proposal, its relevance to the chosen topic and the involvement of the Blinken OSA Archivum holdings in the research. In the case of equal scores those from V4 countries have an advantage. The artists submitting proposals are kindly required to frame their application as research-based projects as well, carefully indicating the collections they will rely on. The artistic proposals will be assessed according to their merit, originality, timeliness as well as their feasibility (with regards to their reliance on available Blinken OSA Archivum collections). Blinken OSA Archivum can only offer conditions for the realization of artistic research, not for production.

Application procedure
Please submit the following to Blinken OSA Archivum (in one merged pdf)
1. Application letter in English (should specify expected period of stay and preferred dates and how you learnt about the scholarship (through which courses, instructors, social media groups or pages, websites, academic platforms, Blinken OSA Archivum public programs/ projects etc. you were informed about this scholarship).
Please note that the Archive’s Research Room is closed during the Christmas period, and the research stay must end on the last day of the given academic year, July 31.
2. Research description/plan in English (about 800 words and should include the following: introduction, presentation of the stage of research, literature on the subject, preliminary hypothesis, questions, identification of possible documents in the Blinken OSA Archivum holdings). Artists are expected to submit a portfolio, too. We recommend you refer to one of the topics in your application. Please also mention the specific collections you would like to consult.
3. Curriculum Vitae (C.V.)
4. Proof of officially recognized advanced level English language exam (native speakers and those with qualification from an English language institution/degree program are exempted)
5. Names of two referees with contact address. Letters of reference are not needed.
The Application letter, C.V., the Research description/plan, the copy of a language exam certification and the Referees’ contact information should be sent by email to Katalin Gadoros at gadoros@ceu.edu.

Selection Committee
All members of the committee are academic staff of Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives / Central European University or the Visegrad Fund.

To find out more about the program, please visit: https://archivum.org/academics/visegrad-scholarship-at-osa

The call in question can be found here: https://enrs.eu/call-for-papers/the-language-s-of-freedom-s-visegrad-scholarship-at-the-blinken-osa-archivum-2485

Contact Information
The Application letter, C.V., the Research description/plan, the copy of a language exam certification and the Referees’ contact information should be sent by email to Katalin Gadoros at gadoros@ceu.edu.

Biennial conferences of the International Oral History Association (IOHA) allow for reviewing the global conditions and problems of oral history, regardless of the actual conference theme. This time, however, the organizers of the 23RD IOHA Conference call on oral historians worldwide to consciously rethink the idea and practice of their discipline.

Oral history today faces both old and new challenges with long-lasting and unpredictable consequences: the crisis of liberal democracy, growing tensions in international politics, climate change with its devastating outcomes on human life, increasing inequalities, wars, and mass migrations. All of the foregoing not only affect the conditions in which oral history is made, but also compels us to rethink its very aim. For Central and Eastern Europe, the full-scale Russian aggression in Ukraine beginning in February 2022 and its consequences are an especially painful reminder of that. Though oral history was, and still is a part of history, it has always been conscious of the responsibility (oral) history has for the current society. Aware of that mission, we encourage the global oral history community to return to the core questions of our practice: what kind of histories should we tell and pass on to the current and future generations?

Therefore, we invite oral historians to rethink this essential issue during the conference that will take place in September 2025 at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Participants are encouraged to address one or more of the following questions in their proposals:

– Political involvement or independence: is ethical neutrality achievable and morally correct in a polarized world?
– Methodological standards: how much does the technological development of AI challenge them?
– Healing the wounds: how far can the therapeutic role of oral history go?
– Oral history responses to human crises: what methodological and ethical problems of emergency documenting and archiving may we use?
– “Lending our ears” (Portelli): how can we provide silenced and marginalized voices access to the public discourse?
– Oral history and environmental history: what are the areas of cooperation?
– Empowering community archives: how to teach them to create their own oral histories?
– How do we balance the dominance of Western academia with the voices of the non-Western world? – agency and resources.
– Globality versus locality of oral history: how to translate local practices into internationally recognized scholarship?
– Post-coloniality: how does oral history help societies reckon with colonial pasts and assist in building post-colonial futures?
– Disseminating oral history: what new methods can we use to present interviews to our audiences?
– Multilingualism as a challenge to global oral history: how to record stories in mother tongues?

Proposals for individual papers, session panels (5 papers each), or audio visual presentations (film/play screenings followed by round table discussions) are to be submitted by July 31, 2024, via the online form on the conference website: https://ioha2025.conference.pl. Members of national oral history associations are encouraged to check the appropriate box and provide the name of the relevant organization.

Individual paper proposals (up to 300 words) must contain the title of the paper, an abstract, and a short bio-note of its author(s). Panel proposals (up to 600 words) must include the title and a description of the session, the titles of all papers, and short bio-notes for all participants. Panel proposals must be international in membership (representing at least two countries). Please indicate the language of your paper/panel (English or Spanish). Audio-visual presentation proposals, in addition to including a description of the film/play (up to 300 words), must provide the names and bios of all discussants. If the film/play is not in English, please make sure that it is subtitled. English will be the main language of the conference. Only the plenary events will be translated into Spanish.

Decisions on the acceptance or rejection of proposals will be announced by the end of September 2024. Registration will be open between October 2024 and January 2025. The conference’s program will be ready by February 2025.

The organizers will not cover travel and accommodation costs; however, IOHA may provide a limited number of travel grants (more information on how to apply can be found on the IOHA website).