Our Manchester team has completed a week-long visit to the University of Toronto (UofT) on November 15. It was an outcome of the Joint Research Initiative “Conflict, Language and Diplomacy in a Hyper-networked World” that brought together researchers and graduate students from Toronto, Canada and Manchester, UK. The visit consisted of several activities.

Firstly, Professor Stephen Hutchings presented our research at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES), the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. His lecture was titled “Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: The Spies Who Came Back From the Snow”. A discussion with CERES research staff and graduate students followed the talk.

Additionally, several PhD candidates from Manchester, affiliated with our project, participated in a workshop at UofT’s Faculty of Information (iSchool). The “Strategic Political Communication and Translocal Media Flows” workshop featured presentations by graduate and post-doctoral students and staff. Lucy Birge, Mollie Arbuthnot and Vitaly Kazakov shared insights from their PhD research. Event attendees also heard from students and staff working on the UofT project “Making Responsible Reporting Practices Visible: Humanitarian Crisis, Global Media, and the War in Syria”.

Finally, Lucy Birge also participated in graduate courses at CERES and iSchool during her stay in Toronto. The visit was hosted by Dr. Kenzie Burchell, an Assistant Professor of Journalism at UofT. It was a follow-up event after the UofT team visited The University of Manchester in June.