International M.A. in New Media ­ (University of Amsterdam) – first deadline 1 February 2012

International M.A. in New Media ­
University of Amsterdam
http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/

Call for Applications ­
Fall 2012 admission deadlines: 1 February and 1 April 2012
http://www.studeren.uva.nl/ma_new_media/

Overview

The International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture (NMMA) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is accepting applications for 2012-2013 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 research technique, including practical data visualization trends. The overall focus of the MA is on training the students as new media researchers. Our permanent faculty are recognized experts in their fields, who are committed to their students. The program admits approximately fifty students per year, classes are no larger than 20, and the faculty-to-student ratio is 1:10.

Curriculum

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 award for best educational blog. The concurrent new media theories course touches upon cybernetics, power, distributed agencies, software, gaming, free and open projects, participatory culture and peer production, digital labour, surveillance and privacy, noopolitics, affective computing, ubiquitious and locative media and creative industries critique. 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 new media art, digitizing culture, mapping politics, data visualization or electronic writing. The new media course is theoretically inclined in the traditions of art history and visual culture, and the mapping politics class is concerned with how to study politics from a Latourian point of view. Digitizing culture is a course in digital humanities, where the focus is on what to do with cultural product now that it has been digitized. Data visualization is a joint theoretical-practical collaboration between designers, programmers and analysts, where the output 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 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 and collaborations may be available, in consultation with the student¹s 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 university¹s 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. The International M.A. in New Media is in the Department of Media Studies, Faculty of Humanities.

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 and the Digital Methods Initiative. http://www.govcom.org/ and http://www.digitalmethods.net/.

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/ (on leave in 2012-2013).

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/ (on leave in 2012-2013).

Yuri Engelhardt, Assistant Professor. Computer modeling and information visualization. Publications include The Language of Graphics (2002); founder and moderator of InfoDesign (1995-99); co-developer of Future Planet Studies at UvA.http://www.yuriweb.com/.

Almila Akdag, Fellow. She studied at the Art History Department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), focusing on technoscience art. She was recently awarded an NWO Veni grant. She is collaborating with Lev Manovich (University of California, San Diego) and with Big Grid & Sara Supercomputing Netherlands.

Michael Dieter, Lecturer. Media art and materialist philosophy. His writing concerns critical uses of digital and networked technologies, and covers topics such as locative media, information visualization, gaming and software modification.http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.j.dieter/.

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. Currently he is doing research on social media and activism. http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/t.poell/

Bernhard Rieder, Assistant Professor. Software theory and politics. Current research interests include search engine politics and the mechanization of knowledge production. http://thepoliticsofsystems.net/.

Sebastian Scholz, Lecturer. Visual culture. His current research interests focus on relations of visibility, knowledge and media, the ‘newness’ of new media and the history and theory of (popular) television programs. http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.scholz/

Application and Deadline

General deadlines: 1 February (early admissions) and 1 April for Fall 2012 admission. Applications received after 1 April may be considered if places are available.

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/gsh-news/news.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, Director, New Media MA program, University of Amsterdam, http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/r.a.rogers/