Knowledge processes and digital media
Knowledge processes and digital media
The Department of Knowledge Processes and Digital Media is based on a special construction: the professorship was established jointly by the University of Oldenburg and the German Maritime Museum - Leibniz Institute of Maritime History Bremerhaven (DSM). This is also the reason for its thematic focus area: it is about 'something with media', but also 'something with the sea'. And this in two respects:
Firstly, the focus is on the role of (digital) media for the genealogies of ships, maritime infrastructures, and oceanographic research. But ships themselves are also understood as media of knowledge production, transmission and storage. Their research from the early modern period to the 21st century includes reflection on the connection between a 'history of media' and historically changing 'media of historiography'. This concerns, for example, the conditions of possibility of certain historical fields of research (e.g. universal history, history of globalisation) and historical narratives (e.g. of discovery, the 'last frontier'), as well as the significance of media and cultural techniques of time recording and navigation for shipping and its history. In addition, there is an examination of the terms and concepts of 'material culture' and 'object-based research' under the conditions of comprehensive digitality. This provides an intersection for interdisciplinary research, which leads from an examination of maritime media to socio-political, ecological, technological and cultural-historical perspectives - and not least to questions about the future - for the relationship between humans and the sea.
Secondly, the Professorship of Knowledge Processes and Digital Media is concerned with the opportunities and challenges of comprehensive digitalisation for museum contexts. This includes an integrated implementation of computerised media for a future-oriented positioning of the DSM collection in terms of its preservation, presentation, communication and research. This includes topics such as three-dimensional object acquisition, research data management and networking in supra-regional, national and international research data infrastructures, as well as new approaches and 'dramaturgies' for the presentation of the collection, the testing and development of virtual exhibition spaces, the planned addressing of digital audiences and the development of interactive and accessible educational programmes. Here, too, there are many points of contact with the UOL's teaching curriculum, which will be reflected in project and practical seminars, for example.
With this task and focus area, the Department of Knowledge Processes and Digital Media has set itself the task of building creative and inspiring bridges between museum-related work and university teaching. It sees itself as a hub for exchange and collaboration across academic disciplines and within a regionally well-developed 'maritime' and 'digital' research landscape. And such research can thrive particularly well in a combination of university and research museum that creates inspiring spaces for research and the public to come together.