People to talk to:
Richard Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Journalism – Faculty of Humanities and Social SciencesRichard describes the ‘real-world’ approach to workshops that exists on the MA Erasmus Mundus Journalism programme:
“One World Media run a whole day programme for us that addresses the operational issues that journalists have to face in danger zones. Last year the programme was run by a former BBC documentary maker. This programme is the War and Conflict specialism within the wider Mundus Erasmus degree that starts when the students attend their first year modules in Aarhus, Denmark.
Since the students on this programme generally have either some experience as war journalists (or aspire to this as a profession), the material is highly relevant for them. It addresses things like travelling and living in war zones, ways to secure interviews with local people, dealing with fixers and different cultural systems.
More widely, we also embed this real-world advice and experience within our programme modules. Last year for example we invited a former BBC documentary maker to discuss her experiences making films in Iraq and a BBC correspondent who described her experiences reporting on 9/11 and the abduction and subsequent murder of Kenneth Bigley in Baghdad. We also provide a session run by Swansea University’s own security expert Russ Huxtable who shows students how to identify and mitigate risk as they travel around the world. In 2019/20, we will also invite a current Reuters journalist and an expert on data harvesting and surveillance. We are currently looking at further increases to journalist provision at Swansea. The degree was constructed using feedback from over 60 former journalism graduates and our own industry panel. Longer term, we are planning a media conference for our students, where all of these guests come to share their experiences.“
In order to support these activities, I co-founded a web resource that asks many of our guests to share their thoughts about working as journalists, journalism research and scholarship. This can be found at www.Journalismkx.com. A number of students have also contributed
For more information please contact SALT@swansea.ac.uk
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