Award for Research and development to “Media and the Second cold War”
Erling Sivertsen, Paul Bjerke, pro-rector Marie Nedregotten Sørbø and Rolf Werenskjold.
The board at Volda University College (VUC) has been handing out the award since 2006 to honor outstanding research- and development-work.
─ It is a line of potential candidates that follow the criteria, and we are lucky to be able to hand out this award every year, said pro-rector Marie Nedregotten Sørbø.
Relevant research area
“Media and the Second cold War” is an interdisciplinary project that among other subjects look at in what degree media contributed to the fall of communism.
─ The research area is to the highest degree relevant for the Faculty of Media and Journalism and for VUC. It is a shared European research area, which has formerly been done little research on, said Sørbø.
Several from the academic staff both at the Faculty of Media and Journalism and other departments at VUC has participated in the project. The key academic staff who lead the research collaboration has been Henrik G. Bastiansen, Erling Sivertsen and Rolf Werenskjold.
─ It means a lot that our colleagues appreciates the work we have done in the project. There are many who should have been up here with us, both those who have participated in the project and those who have paved the way for it. Among these are the Dean Sverre Liestøl, which have made possible things we did not believe could happen in Volda, said Werenskjold the ceremony.
In the allocation the board emphasized that the project has offered participation in various academic levels with a common goal of raising competence: The projects have been interdisciplinary with an international event-oriented approach, and have helped to build up and participate in both a national and an international research network.
International research conference in November
The project group led a separate working group under the Nordic media research conference in 2013 and in 2014 they are organizing a major international research conference, "Media and the Cold War", in Volda 20. - 21. November, with participants from a wide range of countries - across the former Iron Curtain. Department of Media Studies has also previously held a similar research conference in Volda (2008) – with the topic media and protests.
Extensive scientific publications
The international research collaboration at the Department of Media Studies has led to extensive scientific publishing, both nationally and internationally. Erling Sivertsen and Rolf Werenskjold was in 2014 co-editors of the anthology "Media and Revolt" and the Cold War project has several anthologies in English during production. The purpose of the various projects has been to broaden research perspectives from Norwegian media to international relations, contribute to the internationalization of research and to publish internationally.