The CEU Center for Teaching and Learning has joined the two-year long “Sound Relations - Transgressions, Disruptions, Transformations” project funded by the Central European University’s (CEU) Intellectual Themes Initiative. The project is a collaborative effort, involving the CEU Center for Teaching and Learning, the Center for Media, Data, and Society, the Blinken Open Society Archives and several academic departments, to harness sound’s transformative potential for teaching, learning and research. The activities are embedded in the notion that whether as a method, a medium, or as a way of mediating knowledge sound has the ability to transgress disciplinary boundaries, disrupt ways of knowing that have been overly reliant on sight, and transform the ways in which academia is practiced, both inside and outside the university. As such, the project aims to produce original research, equip students, researchers and faculty with the ability to use sound in their teaching, learning and research; and to disseminate CEU’s exceptional research through the university’s podcast library.
The CTL as a work- and meeting place for audiophiles
The CEU Center for Teaching and Learning’s Media Room provides the physical space for audiophiles to work on their sound projects (e.g. Audio Files workshop projects). The Media Room is acoustically-treated and equipped with state-of-the-art technologies to record and edit podcasts. The CEU Center for Teaching and Learning also hosts the fortnightly meetings of the Sound Studies Reading and Listening Group.
Seminars and consultations on academic podcasting
The Center is also involved in the academic activities conducted as part of the project. A seminar for CEU doctoral students, offered as a course within the CTL Certificate Program for Excellence in Teaching in Higher Education, will explore ways of using academic podcasting in teaching in higher education. Faculty discussion groups and individual consultations are also offered to interested CEU faculty on podcasting in higher education, touching on implications for research, teaching and learning. Click here for more information on CTL seminars.
Audio Diaries: Reflection on, Identity within and Performance of Academic Discipline amongst Doctoral Students
The CTL is involved in conducting an empirical research, co-designed by Helga Dorner and Ian M. Cook that aims to explore how repeated recorded and shared reflections within an interdisciplinary group of CEU doctoral students can lead to insights on academic identity, research journeys and notions of disciplinary embeddedness. The Audio Diaries project will utilize solicited audio recordings by advanced CEU doctoral students to provide opportunities to reflect on (1) the actual state of their research (priorities, challenges, achievements, support) and (2) conceptions of and approaches to conducting research in their discipline (feelings of belonging within or outside the discipline, following traditional trajectories or not), and (3) the construction of their academic identity in the context of what they perceive as their disciplinary community. See call for participation here.
Core members
Helga Dorner (Center for Teaching and Learning)
Project Leader
Ian M. Cook (Center for Media, Data and Society)
Project and research management, conceptual overview and implementation
Podcast production, curation of podcast series
Dumitrita Holdis (Center for Media, Data and Society)
Project management
Podcast production, curation of podcast series
Project members
Cameran Ashraf (School of Public Policy)
Eva Bognar (Center for Media, Data and Society)
Jeremy Braverman (Mirabaud Media Lab/Visual Studies Platform)
Marius Dragomir (Center for Media, Data and Society)
Tamas Kiss (Medieval Studies/Digital Humanities Initiative)
Alexandra Kowalski (Sociology and Social Anthropology)
Jessie Labov (Center for Media, Data and Society/Digital Humanities Initiative)
Andrea Peto (Gender Studies)
Sara Svenson (School of Public Policy/Center for Policy Studies)
Sara Swerdlyk (Sociology and Social Anthropology)
Csaba Szilagyi (The Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives)