Emma Kaylee Graves
Canterbury Christ Church University
MeCCSA’s Postgraduate Network continued to engage with the postgraduate community throughout 2019.
Annual Conference
Our annual conference was held at Bangor University on 1-2 July 2019 with the theme of “Evolution”. The conference saw several paper presentations on topics ranging from journalism and broadcasting to media production, ethics and cultural impact, as well as postgraduate training workshops, and keynotes from Dr Melissa Kagen, Dr Lukasz Szulc and Dr Crystal Abidin. The PGN would like to thank the conference Organising Committee, Jordan Glendenning, Isabel Vincent, Eoin Murray and Kate Stuart, for their hard work in organising this event and providing a space for postgraduate students to share their research.
Networking Knowledge
The PGN’s open access journal Networking Knowledge published two issues in 2019. In August, Co-Editors Emma Kaylee Graves (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Nicholas Furze (Canterbury Christ Church University) published a second Special Issue including papers submitted for the Best Paper Award during the PGN’s 2018 conference at Canterbury Christ Church University. The issue included three high quality articles based on the theme of contemporary news discourse around the globe. Shortly after, in September, Co-Editors Olivia Gable (The Open University) and Madhushala Senaratne (University of Sussex) published a standard issue of the journal exploring a wide range of themes. Across four research papers and two book reviews, the issue explores politics, health, activism and human rights.
In addition to this, another special issue of the journal is currently being developed by Eoin Murray (Bangor University). As in previous years, this issue will include full papers from delegates of the PGN annual conference.
New PGN Committee
The PGN Committee has seen some role changes and welcomed several new members. Emma Kaylee Graves (previously Communication Officer) has now been appointed as Chair of the Network. Nicholas Furze remains in his role as Communication Officer but in a supporting role to the new Lead Communication Officer Michael Boyle (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire). Isabelle Jerome (Goldsmiths) was elected as the Committee’s new Vice-Chair and Ruohan Tang (University of Southampton) has taken over as Training Officer. The vote to elect a new journal Editor closed at 12pm on 6th December so we are looking forward to announcing our new Editor very soon.
Plans for the year ahead
We are delighted to announce that our next annual conference will be held at the University of Brighton in September 2020 with the theme of “Mediating Place: Memory, Culture and Experience”. More details, including the Call for Papers, will be released shortly.
In addition to our annual conference, the PGN will be holding a 1 day regional training event to provide training opportunities for postgraduate students. We are currently looking for a host for this event. The host would work with the PGN Committee (primarily the Training Officer) to organise this event. If you are interested, please contact our Training Officer Ruohan Tang at R.Tang@soton.ac.uk.
The PGN looks forward to supporting and working with the postgraduate community in the year ahead.