On 25th November, SEAC will host its first research masterclass of the year, led by SEAC Senior Visiting Fellow Dr Merlyna Lim ( Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society, Carleton University) and Chaired by Dr Bingchun Meng ( Associate Professor and Deputy Head, Department of Media and Communications, LSE), on the topic of researching digital media. This masterclass is available to all students at LSE.

• Dr Merlyna Lim is Visiting Senior Fellow at SEAC, and Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society at Carleton University Canada. An ALiGN Media Lab founder/director, Dr Lim’s research interests revolve around the mutual shaping of technology and society, and political culture of technology, especially digital media and information technology, in relation to issues of justice, democracy and civic/participatory engagement. Dr Lim is an interdisciplinary scholar who has published extensively in various disciplines, including communication and media studies, religious studies, journalism, urban studies/sociology, geography, anthropology, Asian studies, Middle East studies, information and library science, computer science and information systems.
  
  
• Dr Bingchun Meng is Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. In addition to this, she serves as Programme Director for the MSc Global Media and Communications (LSE & Fudan). Dr Meng has a Bachelor's in Chinese Language and Literature (1997) and a Master's in Comparative Literature (2000) from Nanjing University, China. She obtained a PhD in Mass Communication (2006) from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Before joining the LSE, she was a post-doc fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where she worked at the Centre for Global Communication Studies and also taught courses on Chinese media.

Preparatory reading material for the masterclass:

• Lim, M. (2018). Roots, Routes, Routers: Communications and Media of Contemporary Social Movements. Journalism & Communication Monographs Series. https://merlyna.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/lim_jcm_rrr_2018.pdf
• Lim, M. 2017. Freedom to Hate: Social Media, Algorithmic Enclaves, and the Rise of Tribal Nationalism in Indonesia. Critical Asian Studies. 49(3): 411-427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2017.1341188 / https://merlyna.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/lim_cas_2017.pdf