Overview
The International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture (NMMA) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is accepting applications for 2010-2011 academic year. The NMMA is a one-year residence program undertaken in English at UvA in the heart of Amsterdam. Students become actively engaged in critical Internet culture, with an emphasis on new media theory and aesthetics, including theoretical materialist traditions and practical information visualization trends. Our permanent faculty are recognized experts in their fields, who are committed to their students. The program admits approximately forty students per year, classes are usually no larger than 20 and often smaller, and the faculty-to-student ratio is 1:8.
Curriculum and Academics
1st Semester: students follow a course in academic blogging, led by critical Internet theorist and tactical media practitioner Geert Lovink. Their entries form the internationally noted Masters of Media site, http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/, regarded as a top blog for new media research and nominated for a Dutch blog award for best education blog. The concurrent new media theories course focuses on classic texts by innovators from Alan Turing to Tim Berners-Lee. The final first semester class, Digital Methods, given by the program Chair, Richard Rogers, trains students in novel techniques for Internet research, http://www.digitalmethods.net/.
2nd Semester: the student chooses between courses on digital aesthetics, new media politics or information visualization. The digital aesthetics course is theoretically inclined in the traditions of art history and visual culture, and the new media politics class is concerned with the transformations the Internet is bringing to politics. Information visualization is a joint theoretical-practical collaboration between designers, programmers and analysts, where the product is an online tool, digital visualization or interactive graphic. The course of study concludes with the M.A. thesis, an original analysis that makes a contribution to the field, undertaken with the close mentorship of a faculty supervisor. The graduation ceremony includes an international symposium with renowned speakers. Graduates of the NMMA have gained an analytical and practical skill-set that enables diverse careers in research and practice-related areas that make use of the Internet, including business, government, NGOs, and creative industries that are evolving with emerging new media. Our graduates include Lotte Meijer, winner of a Webby award, and Eva Kol, whose MA thesis, Hyves, was published by Kosmos in 2008 and sold over 5000 copies its first year in print.
Student Life
The quality-of-living in Amsterdam ranks among the highest of international capitals. UvA’s competitive tuition (see below) and the ubiquity of spoken English both on and off-campus make the program especially accommodating for foreign students. The city’s many venues, festivals, and other events provide remarkably rich cultural offerings and displays of technological innovation. The program has ties to organizations including PICNIC, the Waag Society, Institute for Network Cultures, Virtueel Platform, Netherlands Institute for Media Art, govcom.org, and other cultural institutions, where internship opportunities may be available, in consultation with the student’s thesis supervisor. Students attend and blog, twitter or otherwise capture local new media events and festivals, while commenting as well on larger international issues and trends pertaining to new media. The quality of student life is equally to be found in the university’s lively and varied intellectual climate. NMMA students come from North and South America, Africa, Asia and across Europe and from academic and professional backgrounds including journalism, art and design, engineering, the humanities and social sciences.
Faculty
Richard Rogers, Professor and Chair. Web epistemology, Digital methods. Publications include Information Politics on the Web (MIT Press, 2004/2005), awarded American Society for Information Science and Technology’s 2005 Best Information Science Book of the Year Award, and the End of the Virtual (U Amsterdam P, 2009). Founding director of govcom.org.
http://www.govcom.org/.
Geert Lovink, Associate Professor. Critical Internet theory, Tactical Media. Publications include Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture (Routledge, 2007). Co-founder nettime listserve (1995
– present); founder, Institute of Network Cultures, 2004.
http://www.networkcultures.org/.
Jan Simons, Associate Professor. Mobile Culture, Gaming, Film Theory. Publications include Playing The Waves: Lars von Trier’s Game Cinema (U Amsterdam P, 2007). Project Director, Mobile Learning Game Kit,
Senior Member, Digital Games research group.
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/j.a.a.simons/
Yuri Engelhardt, Assistant Professor. Computer modeling and information visualization. Publications include The Language of Graphics (2002); founder and moderator of InfoDesign (1995-9); codeveloper of Future Planet Studies at UvA.
http://www.yuriweb.com/
Edward Shanken, Assistant Professor. Digital aesthetics, visual culture. Publications include Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon, 2009) and Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness (U Cal P, 2003).
http://artexetra.com
Thomas Poell, Assistant Professor. New media politics. In 2007 he defended his PhD-dissertation on the democratization and centralization of the Dutch state during the revolutionary period around 1800.
http://nl.linkedin.com/in/thomaspoell
Application & Deadlines
1 January 2010 for “early bird” candidates for Fall 2010. Early bird candidates notified on 1 February. General deadline: 1 April for Fall 2010. Applicants will be notified around 15 June. Applications received after 1 April may be considered if places are available. See http://www.studeren.uva.nl/ma-nieuwe-media/ for details.
More Info & Questions
• International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture – University of Amsterdam, http://www.studeren.uva.nl/ma_new_media/
• Graduate School for Humanities General Information, http://www.hum.uva.nl/gs/actueel.cfm
• Further general questions?
Please write to UvA’s Graduate School of the Humanities, graduateschool-fgw “at” uva.nl.
• Specific questions about curriculum and student life? Please write to Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam, rogers “at” uva.nl.
Download .pdf of this announcment:
http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/amsterdam_newmedia_MA_2010-11.pdf