School of Arts and Communication, Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University
Last updated: 13 January 2012
Postal address: Konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3), Malmö högskola, SE-205 06 Malmö, Sweden
Visiting address: Östra Varvsgatan 11 A, Malmö
Web page: http://www.mah.se/english/Schools-and-faculties/Faculty-of-Culture-and-Society/
Contact person: Oscar Hemer, senior lecturer, international faculty coordinator, phone: +46 (0)40 665 7223
The School of Arts and Communication is one of six educational fields at Malmö University. It aims at creating new technology that should be useful for people, and developed in a fruitful meeting with art and humanistic traditions.
Within the department several courses and programmes are run, including a 120 credits Programme for Interaction Design and a Master program on ”
This is in line with the official internationalisation strategy set up by Malmö University to focus on a selected number of countries, including India, China, Thailand, Russia and Turkey. 
Masters programme and Third Space Seminars:
Hemer has been the Coordinator of the Malmö-Lund Third Space Seminars, first held in November 2002. A second edition of the Third Space Seminar was arranged in Malmö and Lund 26-28 November 2004. These were conferences co-hosted by the cities and universities of Malmö and Lund, gathering some of the world's leading artists and intellectuals for a three-day programme of seminars, exhibitions, workshops and panel discussions. The overall theme for the 2004 Seminar was ”Examining the Law”, and among the key speakers were Dr. Sarat Maharaj (later to become Professor at the Malmö Art Academy, Lund University).
Oscar Hemer and
Linnaeus Palme exchange programme
The department started a Linnaeus-Palme programme in 2004 for a collaboration project with the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore, India. The contact person on the Indian side was originally Professor Madanmohan Rao from the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore, India – he came to Sweden a number of times, and also supervised the Swedish students going to Bangalore – and later Professor Dinesha).
The Swedish coordinator has been Simon Niedenthal, Lecturer in Interaction Technology at K3. He is also a researcher in the Creative Environments Studies.
Every year, two teachers and two students from each side have spent periods at Malmö and Bangalore respectively.
In May 2010 the department hosted Dr. Balaji Parthasarathy as a visiting professor. His research broadly focuses on the relationship between technological innovation, economic globalization, and social change.
In 2011, the project received continued funding for the period 2011-12 amounting to SEK 327 300. This was however the final year of this Malmö-Bangalore exchange programme. In December 2011, Micke Svedemar (photo to the right) from K3 spent a month at IIITB teaching.
More information about the South Asia related Linnaeus Palme projects for 2011-12.
A presentation about the collaboration between IIIT Bangalore and Malmö University has been published as a film entitled ”Design for Humans. New Communication in the Meeting between Bangalore and Malmö” on YouTube. It has been produced by the International Programme Office for Education and Training, the agency in charge of the Linnaeus Palme Exchange Programme.
In the film, Dr. Niedenthal and Prof. Dinesha are interviewed, but most of the film focuses on the real experiences of the collaboration programme by two Bangalore students, Reshma Ratnani and Roshini T Raj (seen on the photo above), that were exchange students at K3 in 2010. During their time in Sweden, they also were given a chance to do practical experience at Sony Ericsson. See the film!
After the completion of the Linnaeus Palme exchange project, the collaboration between K3, Malmö University and IIIB will continue, however in a different form, as a research collaboration. Funds have been secured for this collaboration from STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, supporting the internationalisation of Swedish research and higher education.
Memories of Modernity Indo-Swedish Project
From 1 June 2012 and one year onwards, the School of Arts and Communication (K3) will be involved in a collaboration project entitled ”Memories of Modernity” with Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. This is an experimental & teaching-focused school of art and design founded in 1996 by the not-for-profit Ujwal Trust. Srishti provides its students a self-initiated, self-directed and self-assessed learning environment, with curricula integrating multiple disciplines with an arts foundation. Srishti offers undergraduate and graduate programs. It has specializations in – Textile Design, Product & Interface Design, Visual Communication Design, Independent and Broadcast Media (Film & Video) and Furniture & Interior Design.
The project, similar to a previous Memories of Modernity project carried out by K3 in collaboration with South African partners 2005-07, received funding in the form of ”aktörssamverkan” from the Swedish Arts Council (Kulturrådet) in December 2011 (more information). It will concentrate on two major events, the first one being a 2-day seminar in Malmö, to be held in September 2012. Its focus will be on exploring the role of performance in facilitating community participation within socio-cultural processes. Speakers will include faculty from Srishti and one artist from Bangalore. Some 50 master students from K3 will participate.
This will be followed up by a 3-day Communication for Development seminar and workshop in Bangalore, planned for January 2013. Here the focus will be on the project’s implementation in the trans-disciplinary interventions and field studies. It will involve faculty and students from both universities, as well as artists engaged in the project.
Finally, a series of trans-disciplinary interventions (performative, communicative etc) will be carried out in the old commercial district of Shivaji Nagar in Bangalore, conducted in collaboration by artists, academics and students. 4-5 K3 master students will participate, and for them this project will be part of their final graduate work.
On the Swedish side, this project is coordinated by Oscar Hemer; along with Kathrine Winkelhorn, heading the Masters Programme in Culture and Media Production; and Anna Brag, a visual artist with international experience, who previously worked with Oscar Hemer in the MalmöLund Third Space Seminar in 2002.
At Srishti in Bangalore, the coordinator is Deepak Sreenivasan, artist, media practitioner, researcher and pedagogue, currently a core member of Maraa, a media & arts collective based in Bangalore and faculty at Srishti.
SASNET connection
SASNET’s Assistant webmaster Julia Velkova completed the Masters programme in Communication for Development in 2011. During 2012, she will work part-time as a project work adjunct/assistant at K3 at the Communication for Development Masters programme, where beyond the project work, she will also be involved at the New Media, ICT and Development course part of the program along with general student facilitation and maintenance of the ComDev portal.
On Tuesday 10 January 2012, a SASNET team consisting of Julia and Lars Eklund visited Malmö University, and had a fruitful meeting with Oscar Hemer and Katherine Winkelhorn at K3, discussing their current and coming projects. Photo above.
Lars and Julia also met Micke Svedemar, who informed about new contacts he established in India while teaching at IIITB in December 2011. He had made good contacts at the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) in Chennai, a premier Indian journalism school under the aegis of the Media Development Foundation. These contacts that may lead to further collaboration in the future.
