Kerstin Tomiak - Böcker

This book examines the effects of media interventions in the global South, and argues for a more adaptive and context-sensitive media development.The work investigates media development as part of statebuilding and the effects that Western-led media has in, and on, a newly built state. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, including interviews, observations and social surveys, it analyses the effect media interventions has on global South countries, from the population’s point of view. The findings show that in practice media development can be alien to the societies in which a free press is implemented, which can lead to unintended and negative consequences for social relations in a country. While the book uses South Sudan as a case study, it also presents different perspectives and shows that local views on the media are different from those of Western experts and policymakers. Therefore, the book advocates taking local views seriously and an adaptive media development that is sensitive to the context in which it is set up.This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, media studies, development studies and international relations in general.

This book examines the effects of media interventions in the global South, and argues for a more adaptive and context-sensitive media development.The work investigates media development as part of statebuilding and the effects that Western-led media has in, and on, a newly built state. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, including interviews, observations and social surveys, it analyses the effect media interventions has on global South countries, from the population’s point of view. The findings show that in practice media development can be alien to the societies in which a free press is implemented, which can lead to unintended and negative consequences for social relations in a country. While the book uses South Sudan as a case study, it also presents different perspectives and shows that local views on the media are different from those of Western experts and policymakers. Therefore, the book advocates taking local views seriously and an adaptive media development that is sensitive to the context in which it is set up.This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, media studies, development studies and international relations in general.

This book investigates a different way to gain academic job experience and start an academic career. With universities training more PhD candidates than there are academic jobs, the academic job market, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, is somewhat broken. A possibility for young PhD graduates and early career researchers to gain job experience in an ever more competitive job market is leaving their home countries and taking a job far from home. Academics move from the countries of the so-named global South to Europe and the USA, from the USA to Europe and vice versa, and increasingly also from the so-called "western World“ to Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Grounded in the personal experience of the editors and the chapter contributors, the book argues that there are more ways into academia and than the traditional route. Gathering the experiences of academics who have been moving to work in foreign places, among them Pakistan, Poland, China, the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Portugal, and New Zealand, the book offers diverse and rich perspectives on academic mobility. What awaits the moving academic abroad, how to prepare for this move and what are the challenges and rewards in the foreign classrooms are questions the chapter contributors and editors reflect upon, ultimately wishing to help others decide whether to take this jump into the unknown.