Multimodality and intermediality: Humanist research in a digital world (MIDWorld)

Digitalization enables multimodal and intermedial forms of communication where language, image, colour, music, etc. integrate. Narratives, ideas and individual and collective agency transform as they spread across different media. This mix of modes and media calls for new methods and approaches. Multimodality and Intermediality in a Digital World (MIDWorld) aims to provide emerging researchers in the Humanities with theories and methods for critically analysing the mix of modes and media in our digital world as part of social, political, educational and aesthetic practices. The interdisciplinary graduate school is a collaboration between the multimodal communication research group of the C entre for Humanistic Studies at Örebro University and the Linnaeus University C entre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies. The in-house expertise of two nationally leading research environments along with the joint compulsory courses and research activities ensure that doctoral students (5 in Örebro and 4 in Linnaeus) will not only specialise in the fields of multimodality and intermediality, but will also be trained in holistic and interdisciplinary understandings of meaning-making and communication that draws from Language studies, Literature, Film and Media studies, History, and Rhetoric. In brief, MIDWorld trains researchers’ theoretical and methodological skills for analysing modes and media together, which will be indispensable in humanistic research of the future.