Hyderabad gears up for IAMCR 2014

IAMCR Newsletter | November 2013

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Hyderabad gears up for IAMCR 2014

With  less than eight months to go to the 2014 conference, the Local Organizing Committee is busy planning the programme and putting in place arrangements for a vibrant academic and social experience in Hyderabad. The conference theme, “Region as frame: politics, presence, practice” opens up a variety of ideas and directions for exploration.

The plenaries will feature “wide-angle” discussions to do with global media forces including new directions in media and social change, world cinema and the reality of and resistance to the surveillance society. Special sessions will zoom in on an array of topics ranging from discourses on marginality to the continued resilience of print in the Asian region to community movements and media.

Among the featured speakers are: Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia and a leading thinker on information society, communication and globalisation; Arjun Appadurai of the Department of Media and Culture at New York University, who is perhaps one of the most influential contemporary scholars on globalization and cultural politics; and Siddharth Varadarajan, former chief editor of The Hindu, one of India’s largest newspapers.

Two pre-conferences are planned. One on community media will be organised in collaboration with the OUR Media Network and the other is tentatively titled “Communication for Sustainable Rural Development and Social Change”.
The LoC  hopes to draw in voices from a variety of traditional and emerging areas of scholarship globally, so that the event re-creates the intellectual confluence that has become the hallmark of IAMCR conferences. Several institutions and individuals in India and the Asian region have already indicated interest in participating, and the location of the conference is certain to encourage a higher level of attendance from young scholars from neighbouring countries.

The Hyderabad conference will also feature a curated documentary film festival on the conference theme that will run over three days and include both regional and international films by independent documentary film makers.

More details will become available soon on the conference web site: www.iamcr2014.org

Usha Raman, Chair of Local Organising Committee