Sound Relations - Transgressions, Disruptions, Transformations

Researcher: 
Ian Cook
Helga Dorner
Dumitrita Holdis
Partner: 
Center for Teaching and Learning
Blinken OSA
Duration: 
January, 2017 to January, 2019
Funding: 
CEU’s Intellectual Themes Initiative (ITI)
Academic Area: 
Civil Society and Technology

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. The study of sounds, application of sound-based methodologies and creation of sonic outputs is not only a fascinating, transdisciplinary and growing academic field, but one that can inform, and be informed by, the ways we teach, learn and create within the university setting. In its turn, CEU has the possibility to decisively contribute to developments in this new field.

Although universities remain the predominant formal means for the creation and intergenerational transfer of knowledge, they face immense challenges in terms of the storage, management and dissemination of knowledge, exacerbated by unequal access to resources, including networks. However, engendered by such challenges and concurrent technological advancements opportunities for co-construction, new forms of access and enhanced engagement have emerged. Students and faculty are able to establish together social realities and norms of participation through multiple (online) information sources, including a wide variety of devices and forms of media.

Sound Relations will harness sound’s transformative potential with a two-year-long series of interdisciplinary activities by faculty, students and researchers to 1) produce original research on sound’s ability to transgress, disrupt and transform; 2) to equip CEU students, researchers and faculty with the ability to use sound in their teaching, learning and research; and 3) to disseminate CEU’s exceptional research output via open access sonic media.

The project is a cooperation between the Center for Media, Data and Society, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Blinken Open Society Archives and several academic departments at the Central European University.

Planned activities include:

  • Practical workshops into academic podcast making (for the CEU community)
  • MA course in Sound Studies
  • Specialized courses for faculty and doctoral students lead by the Center for Teaching and Learning
  • Adaptation of classroom teaching practices to include sound technologies, methods and outputs
  • Research into academic podcasting, sound and urban change,  audio diaries and academic identity, audio archives

Taken together, these mutually informing activities will result in a number of concrete outputs, including:

  • CEU’s podcast library (an online, open and user friendly website)
  • A series of new exemplary podcasts that showcase the potential of the medium (e.g. oral testimonies & mass violence, hearing the other in diverse cities, PhD research experience, Radio Liberty, the trial of Imre Nagy)
  • Articles in leading journals (on the current state of academic podcasting, sound and urban change, reflexive practices in academic identity building)

 The project will have transformative impacts across the university, including:

  • the foregrounding of sound as a method of inquiry, mode of reflection and extension of research agendas across departments (including Gender Studies, Sociology and Social Anthropology, and the School of Public Policy)
  • the engendering of blended teaching practices (skills development, conceptual innovation, cross-disciplinary, technology-enabled)
  • the extension of the outreach efforts of the university, making CEU’s cutting edge research open to the world
  • the creation of a community of sound-enabled scholars networked inside and outside the university

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

 The project is a two-year long initiative funded by CEU’s Intellectual Themes Initiative (ITI).