By Vitaly Kazakov, Postdoc

Both junior and senior academics are used to be able to occasionally take short trips away from the run-of-the-mill activities around teaching, research, and publication deadlines to attend conferences, conduct fieldwork, or go on research stays within small research groups. However, department-wide research exchanges are rare in the age of shrinking research and travel budgets and expanding demands on colleagues’ time. This is why the Media and Journalism Studies (MEDJOUR) team’s visit to Oslo at the end of 2024 was unique. As a new member of the department coming to Aarhus outside of Scandinavia, I was lucky to join a group of 14 colleagues when our Department visited the Universities of Oslo and Oslo Met during a three-day trip.

One of the goals of the study visit was to share expertise and experiences with research and teaching activities across the teams involved. At the University of Oslo, MEDJOUR was hosted by our sister Department of Media and Communication. At the day-long workshop here, the discussions centered around the ever-growing interest in AI as both an object of study with its field-changing impact, as well as a tool used in both teaching and research. University of Oslo colleagues, for example, presented three separate large-scale projects on perceptions and various impacts of AI in the Norwegian context and beyond, demonstrating simultaneously the urgency and scale of AI-related research in the media and communication fields, and its appeal to research funders. In turn, MEDJOUR colleagues shared their reflections and insights on the wide-ranging implications for AI emergence in their respective subfields of research: the provocatively posed a question whether AI was “the end of democracy”, and how does AI affect content production and distribution on YouTube were just some of the engaging topics explored. The participants also exchanged helpful insights about practically using AI-aided tools in both specific research contexts and in teaching. The thought-provoking discussion during and beyond the presentations touched also on the ethical considerations of using AI in research and writing as our own practice as academics, helping participants share both excitement and concerns and anxieties about our current daily and future work.

On the second day of the visit, the MEDJOUR team had a chance to meet with colleagues at Oslo Met’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies to share insights across two broad areas of research. Firstly, a range of presentations touched on the projects at both departments examining the overlap of politics and media such as by exploring political significance of celebrity culture and their influence, mediated sports, and safety implications of journalistic practice. The second half of the day revolved around the relationship between environmental and sustainability concerns and media and journalism research. Discussions during the day demonstrated the breadth of cross-disciplinary areas of research around media, environment, and politics, and the depths of methodological approaches to explore issues of interests within these fields – from individual documentary film-making to multi-institutional quantitative research projects – as well as highlighted opportunities for further collaborations and future work inspired by colleagues’ activities.

Besides these important tangible and intangible outcomes from academic exchanges across the two workshops, a real benefit for such a trip was the opportunity of getting to know new and old colleagues better, helping overall team cohesion. Outside the seminar rooms, MEDJOUR and Oslo colleagues had a chance to have shared meals and chats together, a quality time that is often a luxury in the every-day office environment.

As a newcomer to the Department and Aarhus in general, this has really been a privilege to join the research exchange visit to the Oslo universities and get to know senior and early career research colleagues in both informal and semi-formal environments of the seminars. The better appreciation of cutting-edge research across critically significant study areas, and new collaboration opportunities including concrete invitations to contribute to joint publications I received – only possible because of the trip – showcased the values of such exchanges and investment into staff mobility, professional development, and interpersonal bonding.