How do PhD students at ICSJ engage with the academic community?

PhD students at ICSJ actively engage in the academic community across disciplines and around the world – they participate in international conferences, publish scholarly work, secure grants, and contribute to teaching. Their research addresses a wide range of current topics, from queer visuality and decolonial perspectives to media representations of war, demonstrating how diverse and dynamic today’s academic environment is. In this article, we present interviews with selected PhD students who share their experiences of finding their place within the academic community.

Tomáš Pacovský

Which year of your PhD studies are you in?

I am in my second year of full-time study.

What is your research focused on?

I focus on queer visuality, specifically the visuality of Pride events in the Czech Republic. My dissertation is titled “The Dispute over Pride as a Dispute over Images: Manifestations of (Counter)Hegemony and Queer Gaze in Media Content Associated with Pride Events.” 

To put it more simply, I study images that depict Pride and are created in the context of Pride marches. I’m interested in what kind of image of queer people these events and their participants produce, how they negotiate queerness, and ultimately I’m interested in the moment when people begin to tell their own stories.

How are you involved in the academic community (conferences, publications, grants)?

A PhD is a long-distance run, so there’s still a lot ahead of me, but at the moment I’m trying (and hopefully succeeding) to attend conferences. For example, I took part in the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, UK, and I’ll soon be attending a conference in Helsinki. I really enjoy traveling abroad and talking to inspiring, thoughtful people. 

In addition, I’m gradually getting involved in teaching. Together with my colleagues and friends Barbora Součková and Zuzana Jarolímková, we are launching a new course in the summer semester titled “Who Tells the Story? Media, Identity, Memory and Queer-Feminist Perspectives.”

Lenka Marxová

Which year of your PhD studies are you in?

I am in my second year of PhD studies at ICSJ.

What is your research focused on?

I am interested in the construction of female identity in contemporary collage practices by women artists working in postcolonial and decolonial contexts across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In collaboration with these artists, I explore the key discourses that contribute to shaping female identity. I am also interested in the very principle of assembling different elements into new meaningful wholes – both in artistic practice and in the process of identity construction from the perspective of social constructionism.

How are you involved in the academic community (conferences, publications, grants)?

I received a small grant from ICSJ, which enabled me to complete an internship under the supervision of Professor Nomusa Makhubu, PhD, at the Institute for Creative Arts, University of Cape Town. This experience allowed me to gain insight into an active academic and artistic environment addressing identity beyond the European discourse. Local theorists and artists are currently developing new decolonial methodologies, curricula, and approaches to art and research. Since my dissertation is anchored in intersectional and decolonial discourse, it was important for me to become familiar with this practice and establish collaborations with local academics and artists.

I submitted a proposal for a presentation at the ECREA conference, where I plan to share the first results from my data collection in Africa. Together with the museologist Benjamin Ouedraogo from Burkina Faso, we published an interview in the German international journal ExpoTime!, discussing the conditions for returning artworks to Africa. Currently, together with Klára Trsková, PhD, and Edwin Otto, we are organizing screenings of Ghanaian films and a discussion panel on museum restitutions at NFA Ponrepo cinema, as well as an exhibition of Ghanaian artists at the Millennium Gallery. This exhibition is part of the Ghana Culture Week program, held in collaboration with the Ghanaian Embassy in Prague, the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, the National Film Authority of Ghana, Accra Art Week, the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Center for African Studies at Charles University.

Terry Klaban

Which year of your PhD studies are you in?

I am currently in my second year.

What is your research focused on?

My current research focuses on comparing film and book adaptations, primarily in children's literature. I'm comparing three Czech children's books and films to find out how different media convey the same story and themes, and how they engage children as an audience or readers.    

How are you involved in the academic community (conferences, publications, grants)?

Last year, I was part of a larger European grant. This enabled me to truly focus on my studies and my field without worrying about my financial situation. Being part of an international team was also a big plus, as it showed me how I could approach the topic differently and provided a great opportunity to learn from someone more experienced. I had presented at two different conferences and learned how to present a specific topic to someone from a different field, with one of the conferences being designed for doctoral students only, featuring workshops led by established experts, and helping me feel like part of a community and to network; events like these are something I really miss and I think they are important for the integration of doctoral students into the research.

Zuzana Jarolímková

Which year of your PhD studies are you in?

I am in my fourth year of PhD studies at ICSJ.

What is your research focused on?

I study how people today remember the war in Ukraine through photojournalism. Part of my research also focuses on photojournalists themselves and the emotional impact that covering the war has on their lives and work. In addition to my dissertation, I write articles on topics such as death and mourning in photojournalism, war propaganda, and the shaping of memory in schools through images in history textbooks.

How are you involved in the academic community (conferences, publications, grants)?

I try to actively attend conferences, teach, and, when time allows, work on my academic articles. One highlight from my experience so far is a co-authored publication with my colleague Barbora Součková, which will be published in the book Threats, Disinformation, and Regulations in the European Digital Environment: The Inseparable Issues.

Together with Barbora, we also presented our research on mourning and visual tropes at the ECREA 2024 conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia. My best memories so far, however, are from the Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication, where I had a consultation with the American theorist Barbie Zelizer, who is my academic role model. At the turn of the year, I submitted a grant, sent abstracts to conferences, and revised an article… so we’ll see what this year brings.

Bakidzanani Dube

Which year of your PhD studies are you in?

I am in my 5th year of study.

What is your research focused on?

In my PhD dissertation, titled: “The discursive constructions of Africa in African films: A reception analysis of Nollywood and South African films among audiences in Zimbabwe”, I research on the discursive construction of Africanness in selected Nollywood and South African films.

The main research question of the study is: How is Africanness discursively constructed in Nollywood and South African films? The study, which follows abductive reasoning and a reflexivity framework, is a poststructuralist cultural and film studies research conceptualized within discourse studies and postcolonial theory. I am currently analysing my data.

With this study, I hope to make contributions to the subject of Africanness, that is how it is being perceived and cinematically constructed by Africans themselves. For a long time, the discursive visual construction of Africanness has been dominated by western films whose purpose is to entrench western power, knowledge and being. With the rise of Nollywood and South African films in the post-colonial era having finally given the Africans their own voice to speak about themselves, it is my interest and aim to see how Africans perceive themselves, as seen through the selected films. I hope not just to unravel how Africans cinematically represent themselves but to trigger a re-thinking of Africanness as well. 

How are you involved in the academic community (conferences, publications, grants)?

I am an active candidate in the academic community. Regarding conferences, I have so far presented papers at three conferences: 1) I presented a paper titled “South African Film, Nollywood and the identities of Africa: A visual analysis” at the International Association for Media and Communication (IAMCR) Lyon 2023 Conference, Lyon France, 9-13 July, 2023. 2) I presented a paper titled: “Examining the visual construction of the “other” in postcolonial African films: A critical discourse analysis of Nollywood films” at International Association for Media and Communication (IAMCR) 2024 Conference under the Visual Culture Working Group, 30 June to 4 July 2024 at Christchurch, New Zealand. 3) I presented a paper titled “The discursive construction of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict in Chinese Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis of China Global Television Network (CGTN)’s coverage of Russia’s 'Special Military Operation' in Ukraine” on the 15th of June 2024 at the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Conference titled: Rewriting the History: Changing the Reading of the Past; Organized by the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University 13-15 June, 2024 in Prague, Czech Republic.

Regarding publications, I have a published a co-authored article titled “Slow fashion communication on social media: Educating consumers through rational content in Indonesia and Malaysia” Article co-authored with Ariestya Angga, Koudelkova Petra Stephani, Nicky Elmada, Maria Advenita Gita published by the Plaridel Journal of Media, Communication and Society for publication.

In addition, a co-authored chapter titled “The criminalization of journalism through post-colonial laws in Zimbabwe: A case of Blessed Mhlanga” has been accepted to be published in an edited volume titled “Media, Law and Politics in Zimbabwe: Continuities and Raptures”, to be published later this year. The papers presented at IAMCR are currently under review with their respective journals.