ZHUHAI, Guangdong, June 10, 2023 -- Scholars from home and abroad attended the 3^rd Media Anthropology Conference held at UIC on June 9–10 to discuss important topics related to media anthropology. The theme of the interdisciplinary conference this year is “Revisiting Global/Local Communities: Media, (Im)mobilities and (Dis)placement.”

In the opening ceremony, Professor Zhou Yongming, the Vice President (Academic) of UIC noted that the media nowadays impacts every aspect of society and the way individuals think, reshaping people’s understanding of the local and global communities.

Prof. Zhou Yongming, Vice President (Academic) of UIC

Professor Tze-ki Hon, the Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, said he is hoping that this conference “will kick off a round of discussions about a new global system that is more equitable, more disciplined, more distributive, and warmer to every person around the world.”

Prof. Tze-ki Hon, Dean of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Professor Helen Siu from Yale University, Professor Roza Tsagarousianou from the University of Westminster, and Professor Zhang Lei from the Communication University of China delivered keynote address at the conference.

In her speech “Delta on the Move: Navigating Inter-Asian History and Culture,” Professor Siu introduced the different historical aspects and future directions of South China in terms of the economic and cultural resources, multi-ethnic identities, and strategic interactions.

Prof. Helen Siu, Yale University

Professor Roza Tsagarousianou shared her research on the relationship between time and migration. Through observations and interviews with the illegalized migrants in the Moria and Kara Tepe camps in Greece, Dr. Tsagarousianou introduced the concept of “historical time” to critically explore the narratives of these people’s past lives, their present suffering, and future aspirations.

Professor Roza Tsagarousianou, University of Westminster

Professor Zhang Lei’s talk focused on Chinese netizens’ “mediatized caregiving” of pandas. From people’s emotional sharing and interpretation of pandas’ daily life in social media, Dr. Zhang found three types of mediatized caregiving, and two mediums in the relationship between people and things: the zoos and social media.

Professor Zhang Lei, Communication University of China

In the two-day conference, 12 panels with esteemed moderators and panelists discussed topics ranging from mobile spaces; media and materiality; ethnicity, diaspora and mobility; historical perspective on media; generation, gender, cultural groups and media; mediatized relationships, and so forth.

The conference also included a photography exhibition The Others Around and Us, showcasing the work of students from the Programme of Media and Communication at UIC. The exhibition aims to create a collective image of “the others” through the lens, inviting audience to think about the nature of groups and the perceived boundaries that separate us.

In the closing ceremony, Dr. Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman, the Head of the Department of Communication, awarded the certificates to the presenters, the discussants, and other guests of the conference.

Reporter: Duoer Luo

Editor: Xiaomeng Lan