The research network, “Entangled Media Histories” (EMHIS) was financed by the “Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education” (STINT) from Autumn 2013 to Summer 2019. It has the task of promoting the collaboration of three research and teaching institutions in the area of media history: the
Department of Media History at the University of Lund (Sweden),
the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University (Great Britain) and the Research Centre for Media History at the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg. The tri-national research network is led by a steering committee, consisting of Prof. Dr. Patrik Lundell and Prof. Dr. Marie Cronqvist (Lund University), Prof. Dr. Hugh Chignell and Dr. Kristin Skoog (Bournemouth University), along with Dr. Hans-Ulrich Wagner and Dr. Christoph Hilgert (Hans-Bredow-Institut).
The research network promotes work on European media history, furthers research on the perspective of “entanglement” in media history and tackles previously neglected aspects of the European influence on the development of media history. With the concept of “entanglement”, methodological considerations on a “histoire croisée” are being transferred for the first time into the area of media history and, thus, the demands for transnational research on media history are being addressed.
The a) exchange of junior researchers and guest researchers, the b) joint cooperation in regular workshops, as well as the c) scientific profile and use of the concept “Entanglement” in media research is a central part of this network. In this regard, there have been several short and long-term research visits of Swedish and British researchers to Hamburg since the autumn of 2013, as well as research visits of Alina Laura Tiews and Hans-Ulrich Wagner to Bournemouth and Lund.
The project mounts workshops (EMHIS forums) and conferences onto a regular timetable. There have, in turn, been six forums so far in Bournemouth, Hamburg, Lund, and Lisbon. During this process, the exchange of researchers and residencies by guest researchers from Sweden to England, or respectively Germany, and vice-versa is being specifically promoted. The participants in the EMHIS project regularly report online on the network’s activities. In July 2015, Alina Laura Tiews and Hans-Ulrich Wagner presented the findings of the EMHIS-network in a podcast of the BredowCast.
The EMHIS forum I on the topic of “entangled perspectives” took place from the 13th to the 15th of November 2013 at the Hans-Bredow-Institut. Guest residencies by doctoral students from Sweden and Great Britain, as well as by the researchers Maike Helmers (Bournemouth) and Marie Cronqvist (Lund), accompanied the event. The EMHIS forum II on the topic of “Doing Entangled Media History” took place from the 7th to the 9th of May 2014 at the Centre for Media History in Bournemouth. It was preceded by a “Writing Retreat” in which Alina Laura Tiews took part.
The concept of ‘Entanglement’ was discussed at several conferences, such as the section Communication History at the annual conference of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) with Hans-Ulrich Wagner in September 2015 in Venice on the topic of “Bridges and Boundaries: Theories, Concepts and Sources in Communication History”, as well as the annual conference on the section History of Communication of the DGPuK in January 2016 in Dortmund. So far, several publications are being completed or are already published, including the article “Entangled Media Histories: The Value of Transnational and Transmedial Approaches in Media Histography” in the journal “Media History”. Furthermore, Hans-Ulrich Wagner (as lead author) has published the article on “Media after 1945: Continuities and New Beginning” together with colleagues for the (planned) “Handbook of European Communication History.”
