What’s new?

Say! See! Peep!

There is a paradox, of course: the more that happens, the less time there is to write about it. I am beginning to think I should follow William Uricchio’s example and state up front that this is not a blog. That would be one way to avoid anyone’s frustration at my infrequent updates.

Instead, I will follow René Magritte’s example and state simply: this is not a blog.

Have ideas. Will travel.

As of 31 July, I am no longer a lecturer in media and cultural studies at Utrecht, though I remain affiliated with the Research Institute for History and Culture (OGC). Furthermore, my core activities preparing Inventing Europe (more on that in a moment) for the Foundation for the History of Technology have wrappted up with the site’s release. I am therefore on the lookout for new opportunities for research, teaching – or other new projects beyond the traditional academic realms.

My interests are broad, my skills are multiple, and I am willing to move. Let’s talk.

I Get Around

This Spring and Summer I got to present first sketches of the research I am starting to develop on the history of women’s radio in transnational perspective (more on that anon) with a couple of talks and very interesting small conferences.

The first was “Addressing the Audience: European Historical Perspectives” held at the Centre for Broadcasting History, Bournemouth University, 3 May 2012. this was fascinating in that it looked at a range of ways of engaging with the long history of media – and for once with a heavy emphasis on radio. My talk “What should Gerda Heuldonk do? Domestic skills and transborder navigation in post-war women’s radio in Western Europe.” looked at ways we might begin to explore the complex (media) geographies of listening.

At the end of June, I then had the pleasure of attending a workshop at my old stomping grounds at NIAS on “Media Homes” organized by Carolyn Birdsall and Natalie Scholz of the University of Amsterdam. This was a delightful workshop that explored the ways in which a number of media – and a number of ideas of homes – have constructed each other over the years. My paper “‘With 20 postcards a year you can change the world’ Women’s radio and the staging of domestic agency in the mid-20^th century” took up similar themes to my Bournemouth paper, with a focus on the ways in which a particular sort of media interactivity came to be presented as a form of ‘domestic citizenship’ in women’s radio. But check out the whole programme.

Is that all?

Of course not. It was actually a teaser. Stay tuned for what’s really new….