Main Objectives
The main objectives of the Summer School are:
a) to provide a strong learning and research environment for PhD students at an internationally renowned research facility with the objective of fostering an optimal exchange between participants from all over Europe;
b) to provide innovative mutual support for doctoral studies in the field of media and communication, with additional organizational support from the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA);
c) to prompt a critical dialogue between academics on the cultural and technological challenges posed by mediatization;
d) to promote a respectful but critical dialogue between academic senior researchers and representatives of the media industry and non-governmental institutions.
The Summer School aims to provide a supportive international setting where doctoral students can present their ongoing work, receive feedback on their PhD-projects and establish valuable academic contacts for the future.
The European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School is a student-centered summer school. In contrast to many other summer schools, the lecturers’ main task is not to lecture, but to provide support to the participants in their PhD trajectories.
The main emphasis of the European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School is on providing structural and individuated PhD-support for young European scholars combined with numerous opportunities for informal dialogues with lecturers and peers.
The main learning format of the Summer School are the student feedback workshops where students present their PhD projects and receive structured, high quality and multivoiced feedback on their work from summer school lecturers and students. The feedback consists of a series of extensively elaborated analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual PhD projects, which allow PhD students to structurally improve the quality of their academic work.
The Summer School combines a constructive-supportive approach with a critical perspective. The atmosphere of the Summer School is fundamentally noncompetitive, as the talents of all participants are acknowledged, and participants and lecturers act as peers, cherishing academic collegiality and collaborative work.
The Summer School also expresses the utmost respect for academic diversity in terms of a plurality of schools, approaches, theories, paradigms, methods, and cultures in academia.
A Brief History
The European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School started in 1992 as a project to promote European dimension of communication studies education and research programmes. Initially, the consortium, initiated by University of Stendal (Grenoble, France) and Westminster (UK), included ten (Western) European universities.
During the two decadces of continuous operation, the consortium of universities expanded to the present-day partnership of 20 European universities (University of Bremen DE, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) HU, University of Roskilde DK, University of Tampere FI, Lund University SE, Charles University CZ, University of Ankara TR, University of Tartu EE, Vrije Universiteit Brussel BE, University of Stirling UK, University of Bergen NO, Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) LT, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano IT, University of Helsinki FI, University Stendhal, Grenoble 3 FR, London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) UK, University of Westminster UK, Autonomous University of Barcelona ES, University of Ljubljana, SI, and Loughborough University, Uk). Affiliated partners of the Summer School are European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).
The summer school is currently (2016-2018) financially supported and hosted at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano by the Department of Communication Studies and Performing Arts, in collaboration with Alta Scuola in Media, Comunicazione e Spettacolo (ALMED) .
In occasion of its second Milanese edition, in 2017, the summer school has celebrated its 25th year of activity.
Previous editions of the summer school were hosted by University Stendahl, Grenoble (1992-96), Complutense University of Madrid (1997), University of Lund (1998), Westminster University (1999-2003), University of Tampere in cooperation with University of Helsinki (2004), University of Tartu (2005-2009), University of Ljubljana (2010-2012) and the University of Bremen (2013-2015).