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Programme

We are delighted to present both the conference schedule 'at a glance' and the full conference programme with details for each panel (including room locations and chairs). The Book of Abstracts is also available here.

Highlights are detailed below and practical information for speakers is presented lower down on this page.

We have now sent out email notifications for speakers so if you are the first author or panel organiser you should have heard back from us (if not, please contact us at meccsa2017@leeds.ac.uk).

The conference venue will open at around 11.30am on Wednesday 11 January to complete registration, with the conference programme starting at 12.30pm. We are delighted to announce that Professor Andrew Ross will kick off the conference with his keynote address on 'High Culture/Hard Labour: Looking Beyond the Creatives'.

The programme will run until 3.30pm on Friday 13 January (end time). We are thrilled to have Professor Barbie Zelizer closing the conference for us with a keynote presentation entitled 'Resetting Journalism in the Aftermath of Brexit and Trump' along with reflections on the event. In addition to our opening and closing keynotes we are honoured to have both Dr Shakuntala Banaji and Professor Paul Gilroy as keynote speakers on Thursday 12 January. You can find details on all our keynotes here.

So please book your travel based on these times (conference programme running from 12.30pm, 11 January to 3.30pm Friday, 13 January) – we hope you’ll be able to join us for all three days to make the most of the conference.

Other highlights:

We will provide regular updates but here is something to whet your appetite:

BU Innovation Booth at MeCCSA 2017: Turn your research into resources for social change

For the past three years, our Civic Media team at Bournemouth University has been training researchers, journalists and NGOs in data storytelling. For MeCCSA 2017, we are taking our team on the road to bring conference participants the BU Innovation Booth. Book an interactive, one-on-one session with our team of communication designers, storytellers and public engagement experts at MeCCSA 2017.

We will use hands-on activities for turning your research into resources for public engagement through storytelling, visualisation and communication design. Sessions will consist of short exercises that explore questions like:

  • How can you use visualisations in your research?
  • Is there an interactive map hiding in your last project?
  • How can character loglines and plot devices help you to create visual narratives from your work?
  • How can you engage with iconography and graphic design to reach wider audiences?
  • What visualisation and analysis tools can help you reach new audiences?

Sign-up for your session here: http://www.civicmedia.io/events/bu-innovation-booth-at-meccsa-2017/
There will also be sign-up spots on the day and mini-activities for those passing through. Drop by our booth in the Clothworkers Foyer and try them out.

Facilitators: Anna Feigenbaum, Sam Goodman, Brad Gyori, Daniel Jackson, Einar Thorsen, Daniel Weissmann (Bournemouth University) w/ Minute Works communications design (Manchester, UK)

Beer festival
Taking the lead from Bournemouth University’s 2014 innovation, we will be holding a beer festival to supplement the wine reception on Wednesday evening. Each delegate will receive a free half-pint beer glass and is invited to enjoy the local beers of West Yorkshire.

Pub quiz
Don’t forget to brush up on your popular culture knowledge for the MeCCSA Pub Quiz with Professor Bethany Klein setting the questions on Wednesday evening at the Victoria pub.

Roundtables
We are looking forward to a number of roundtable discussions including ‘Making Media in the North’ with media practitioners who have all played a part in (re)imagining the north, and ‘Media and the Public Interest’ in response to BBC Charter renewal, Channel 4 privatisation and similar developments.

Cultures of Beer panel
If you think your thirst for beer might not be quenched at the beer festival, you could sign up to a panel devoted to the culture of beer. Led by Dr Sam Goodman (Bournemouth), ‘Raising a Glass to Freedom’? (in)equality in Beer, Britain and Empire’ will discuss the revival of beer in the UK but also view this current popularity as loaded with social meaning; serving as a window into the British imperial past, as well as our contemporary present. The panel includes some beer tasting and the £5 charge covers the beer. You can sign up in the online registration store although this is strictly limited to 30 people and will be offered on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

What Media Studies Academics Should Know About Open Access
Media Studies has embraced open access publishing to a greater extent than many fields with the subject prominent in the lists of new university presses’ lists and academic-led imprints.

Three publishers from Goldsmiths Press, Huddersfield UP and University of Westminster Press, together with Stella Butler, the Leeds University Librarian and member of the Editorial Board of the White Rose University Press, lead an informal panel and Q&A on the benefits and some of the downsides to this messy evolution of scholarly communication. They ask:

  • what’s happening now and why?
  • what are the practicalities for the REF, ECRs and research?
  • who benefits from open access or from publishing as usual?
  • what potential downsides exist to OA?
  • what kind of experiments are possible, what collaborations?
  • why publish and where might technology lead us next?

Please join us over lunch on Friday 13 January for a fascinating discussion!

Information for speakers

The MeCCSA 2017 Conference is being held in three locations within the University of Leeds.

Registration, publishers’ stands and refreshments are Parkinson Court South (in the Parkinson Building by the Main Entrance).

Panels and keynotes are in the School of Music and the School of Media and Communication (Clothworkers' Building North). All venues are within walking distance of one another and there will be signage and conference helpers around to assist you.

You can access a map with the above three locations highlighted here: MeCCSA map

All rooms for the presentations are equipped with standard AV equipment including DVD players and speakers. Practice films will be shown in the Cinema in Clothworkers' Building North.

Practicalities for presenting

Our strong preference would be for you to bring your presentation on a memory stick and use the PC already connected in each room. Please give yourself time to upload the presentation before your session. If you want to use a Mac, please make sure you bring any required adapters. As mentioned, we would strongly advise you to download any presentation material onto a memory stick instead.

Length of presentations. Please check the programme to see how many speakers are in your session. Each panel session is 1.5hrs. Where there are 3 speakers, you can time to presentation for 20 minutes; if 4 speakers, time it for 15 minutes; and where there are 5 speakers, please time the presentation for 12 minutes. There will be panel chairs and student helpers in the rooms to assist you.

Roundtable sessions are one hour in length. Please check the speaking format with the session organiser.

Keynote addresses will be recorded to be made available later, and we will also be tweeting throughout the conference using the hashtag #MeCCSA2017 and using the handle @MeCCSA2017.