On 12 February 2021 at 12:00 (Moscow time) Professor Michael Wilson, Head of Creative Arts at Loughborough University UK will deliver a public lecture on Storytelling and the Digital Revolution: How technology has changed our narrative selves, and also how it has not.
This event is part of UK-Russia Creative Bridge 2020-21 programme, it is a result of collaboration between Loughborough University and Voronezh State University. Apart from the talk for the wider audience there will be a series of events for students and lecturers of both Universities.
The public talk is exploring the phenomenon of digital storytelling.
The evolution of digital technologies, and in particular web-based platforms, has had a profound effect on the way we conduct one of our fundamental behaviours as human beings: storytelling. The impact of technological advancement in recent decades on homo narrans has been as profound as that of the Kodak Box Brownie on domestic photography, or of the printing press on book production. We now all have access to global audiences for our stories, as well as new tools to incorporate into our telling, and what used to be known as the Information Superhighway’ has become the Narrative Superhighway.
Against this background, a new practice of ‘Digital Storytelling’ has emerged with its own community of practitioners and audiences. For researchers and teachers of storytelling, it is a constantly evolving practice that has presented us with new ways of co-creating knowledge and learning. This talk will explore the evolution of Digital Storytelling and examine some of the challenges and opportunities it presents, using examples from recent research projects conducted by The Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University. (https://storytellingacademy.education)
The talk will be held on Zoom in English with simultaneous translation into Russian.
Attendance is free, registration is required.
About the speaker
Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama and Head of Creative Arts at Loughborough University, where he leads the Storytelling Academy, a research team in Applied Storytelling. His main research interests lie broadly within the field of popular and vernacular performance and over the past fifteen years he has led numerous RCUK/UKRI cross-council and European Commission projects that explore the application of storytelling to a variety of social and policy contexts, especially around environmental policy, health, education and social justice. More recently this has included GCRF and Newton Fund projects on environment and health in Kenya, Uganda, India and Colombia. He has been a member of the Advisory Boards for the Digital Economy Programme (RCUK, led by EPSRC), Connected Communities (AHRC) and Digital Transformations (AHRC). He is also Chair of the Arts and Humanities Panel for the British Council’s Newton Fund programme.
