Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)

At IMS, we explore human communication as multimodal and intermedial. All communication needs to be physically mediated, be it by bodies, books or digital devices. All communication is multimodal, as distinct semiotic modes such as text, images, sounds, or gestures integrate in complex multimodal meaning-making processes. All communication is intermedial, as it is shaped and formed by relations across and within different media products and involves the perception and interpretation of signs across different media contexts. Multimodal simultaneity and intermedial interrelations are essential to approach the hybrid media ecology of digitized societies.

The graduate school Multimodality and Intermediality in a Digital World (MIDWorld) critically explores the mix of modes and media in our digital world as part of social, political, educational and aesthetic practices.  

IMS approaches media and communication from an arts and humanities perspective. Projects explore in different ways how media and modes express human ideas, memories, and creativity. Meaning-making, narration, learning, and truthfulness, fundamental aspects of human communication, are four central trajectories that permeate IMS research.

• Meaning-making processes are informed by the multimodal integration of different resources such as colour, sound, text and the intermedial dynamic between materials, perception and interpretation. New knowledge is generated through interaction between people in a specific context. These processes can be explored in theoretical analysis and artistic research.
• Narration is a fundamental human strategy to in many areas of life. Fictive and factual narratives travel across literature, film, games, and social media platforms. Narratives create coherence and provide understanding in court trials, education, politics, and science.
• Multimodal and intermedial perspectives help to develop knowledge communication and learning in digitized society. Learning content is narrated and transformed by a mix of modes across media. Multimodal and intermedial perspectives help to develop inclusive and flexible teaching methods. 
• There is an urgent need for multimodal and intermedial exploration of truthfulness in mediation. This approach helps us to address the pressing questions of fake and authentic, as well as the role of media in knowledge communication. 

All pressing global challenges are related to media. We use media to make sense of the world and to communicate knowledge and ideas. Artists use media to push boundaries and create interventions. Transdisciplinary research clusters at IMS explore how intermedial and multimodal communication forms and shapes current social challenges.

2024

Conference:  Intermedial Networks: The Digital Present and Beyond. The 7th Conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies. October 23-25.
Conference programme.
Workshop: Transmediating Authorship. Tove Jansson and Astrid Lindgren. June 12.
Workshop: Comics och lärande. May 16.
Concert: Digital transformations. A dynamic encounter between music, art and technology. March 12.

2023

Conference: Media and Emotional Mobilization, 12-13 October.
Conference programme.
Workshop: Comics literacy and learning. May 4.
Seminar and Concert: Living scores. Intermediality and artistic research. April 12.
Conference: Environmental Emergencies Across Media, March 16-18.
Conference programme.

2022

Open lecture Series: Meeting Media Minds – Critical Legacies of Lars Elleström. (publication Future Directions in Intermediality and Multimodality: Conversations Inspired by the Work of Lars Elleström, forth 2024).
Wonderland Escape Room. European Researcher’s Night, Sept 22.
Teaching Intermediality March 23.

2021

• Conference: "Trust Me!" Truthfulness and Truth Claims across Media", 9-12 March, 2021.
  • Conference programme
  • Conference book of abstracts
• Workshop: "Från bok till film: Utvandrarna och Aniara." (about screenwriting, screenplay development, and adaptations). https://lnu.se/mot-linneuniversitetet/aktuellt/kalender/2021/fran-bok-till-film-utvandrarna-och-aniarany-sida/

2019

• Workshop: “Mediation, transmediation and truthfulness II”, 20 Nov, 2019.
• Symposium: Performativity across Media, 3-4 October 2019
• Conference: Sounds of Mass Media: Music in Journalism and Propaganda, 7-9 June 2019, Eleventh meeting of the International Musicological Society (IMS) Study Group Music and Media (MaM)
• Workshop: “Mediation, transmediation and truthfulness I”, 30 Jan, 2019
• Conference: Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices, 23-25 January 2019

2018

• Workshop: Interrelations among different forms of human communication, 29-31 October 2018
• Conference: Symbiotic Cinema, Confluences between film and other Media, 6-8 September 2018, 24th Sercia Conference
• Workshop: “Transmedial Narration: Current Approaches” with Jan Noël Thon, 11 April, 2018.

2016

• Conference: Transmediations! Communication across Media Borders13-15 October 2016

2013

• Conference: Disturbing Adaptations, 26-27 September 2013, The 8thAnnual Conference of the Association of Adaptation Studies

2012

• Symposium: New Positions in Adaptation Studies, 8 February 2012

2011

• Conference: Transmedial Interaction: Western/non-Western Media Arts, 8-10 December 2011
• Symposium: Eighth International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature, 16-18 June 2011
• Symposium: Adaptation and Media Transformations, 13–14 May 2011
• Symposium: Narration as a Transmedial Phenomenon, 11–12 March 2011

2010

• Symposium: Virtual Space and Time, 8-9 October 2010

2009

• Conference: Childhood and Postcolonialism Symposium, 15-16 December 2009
• Symposium: Bachtin and Intermediality, 3-4 December 2009
• Conference: Academic Perspectives on Comics, Manga & Graphic Novels, as Intercultural & Intermedial Phenomena, 16–18 April 2009

2008

• Conference: Astrid Lindgren: Internationality and Intermediality, 18-20 September 2008
• Conference: In Frost and in Cold: Nordic Ballad Meeting – Conference for Researchers, Practitioners and Teachers, 26-29 March 2008

2007

• Conference: Imagine Media! Media Borders and Intermediality, 25–28 October 2007

2005

• Conference: Bodies – Arts – Crossroads: The Body and Intermediality, 27–30 October 2005, The 7th NorSIS Conference

Following Lars Elleström's death in December 2021, we launched a series of online lectures with international scholars to commemorate his work. The invited speakers were asked to talk about and discuss one of Lars Elleström’s concepts in relation to their own work. The lectures will be published in an anthology in due time.

2024

• Luca Diani (Guest PhD 2024)
• Alexandra Huang-Kokina (Guest reseacher 2024)

2023

• Panagiotis Zestanakis (Marie Curie postdoc 2023-)
• Yikun Wu (External postdoc 2023)
• Xiaoshang Shuiping (Guest researcher 2023)
• Heidi Hart (Guest researcher 2023)
• Young Min Kim (Visiting Professor 2023)

2022

• Anne Gjelsvik (Lars Elleström Guest Researcher 2022)
• Gibran de Souza (Guest PhD 2022)
• Giulia Bigongiari (Guest PhD 2022)
• Maddalena Carfora (Guest PhD 2022)

2021

• Elena Timplalexi (Guest Researcher 2021)

2020

• Péter Makai (External postdoc 2018-2020)
• Emma Tornborg (Associated researcher and postdoc 2015-2020)
• Lea Wierød (External postdoc 2018-2020)

2019

• Mieke Bal (Visiting Professor 2019)
• Fátima Chinita (External postdoc 2015-2019)
• Ania Gutowska (Marie Curie postdoc 2017-2019)
• Rong Ou (External postdoc 2019)

2018

• Ana Munari (External postdoc 2018)

IMS has arrangements with several external, internationally acknowledged scholars, referred to as our 'expert panel', working within a range of disciplines of relevance to the developing fields of intermediality and multimodality. 

The individual members of the expert panel are for example called upon as advisors when new IMS-founding applications have to be developed, or as guest presenters at our IMS seminars, doctoral courses and internal colloquiums and research workshops.

• Open-access publications available in DiVA (un-published conference papers excluded). The majority of our open-access publications are to be found here.
• Additional open-access publications available externally to DiVA. A few open-access publications are not uploaded to DiVA, but can be found here instead.
• Publications in English (un-published conference papers excluded).
• All publications and conference papers in English.
• All publications and conference papers in all languages.

Come to IMS with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF)

If you work within the research areas of intermediality, multimodality or related fields and are interested in spending one or two years as a researcher at the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS), you are welcome to submit a proposal for participating in a workshop at Linnaeus University, Sweden.

The CFP to the workshops open approximately six months prior to the MSCA-IF deadline and will be posted below when active.

The workshop and ensuing contacts with our Grants and Innovation Office (GIO) should lead to an application for funding from MSCA-IF, allowing you to fulfil a research project and participate in the IMS activities.

Read more about the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme at Linnaeus University here.

Read the current call for Expressions of Interest programme for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action - Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) 2023 here.

The Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS) welcomes guest researchers from the Humanities and Social Sciences focusing on different topics relevant to the larger fields of intermediality and multimodality. Via our guest researcher program, it is possible to visit the Centre for a period of between two weeks and three months, and vi invite scholars from all over the world and at all career levels, from PhD candidates to full professors, to contact us about entering the program.

The aim of the guest researcher program is to establish or develop joint research activities between IMS researchers and other Swedish or international scholars. Scholars who are accepted to the guest program will be expected to participate in the activities of the Centre and its research clusters, primarily by presenting at and participating in our regular seminars, but also by being a part of workshops and other activities that might take place. Priority will be given to guest researchers whose work is of high relevance to the Centre and its members.

Scholars who are interested in visiting IMS as guest researchers should preferably be sponsored by an IMS member with whom he or she would like to collaborate. When such a collaboration is possible, the application for a guest researcher visit should be submitted by the IMS researcher in question. Sponsored applications for guest researcher visits can be submitted by a member of the Centre at any time during the year and are normally processed within two months. As an alternative to a sponsored application (where no direct collaboration is possible but a visit can still be mutually beneficial, e.g. for PhD students), an inquiry may be sent to the Director of IMS, Jørgen Bruhn. 

The guest researcher positions are non-salaried and presuppose that the visiting researcher has a salary or bursary from his or her home institution. The Centre provides office space and access to the research activities of the Centre: the university library services will be available, too. In special cases, the Centre can provide basic accommodation and funds to cover travel and extra living expenses during the guest research visit.

For more information about the application procedure and conditions for the guest researcher program, please contact the Centre’s Administration Officer Helena Rydén (helena.ryden@lnu.se).

MIDWorld

IMS runs the interdisciplinary graduate school MIDWorld in collaboration with the Centre for Research in the Humanities and the research team in Multimodal Communication at Örebro University. The interdisciplinary graduate school MIDWorld provides emerging researchers in the Humanities theories and methods to critically analyse the mix of modes and media in our digital world.

FUDEM

IMS is collaborating with the research school The Future of Democracy: Cultural Analyses of Illiberal Populism in Times of Crises (FUDEM), a multi-disciplinary environment in which junior and senior researchers in cultural studies, ethnology, gender studies, and musicology are doing research on the variety of cultural forms in which illiberal populism reveals itself in times of crises. The researchers and PhD students are located at six Swedish universities: Linnæus University, Linköping University, Lund University, Södertörn University, University of Gothenburg and Uppsala University. FUDEM is financially supported by the Swedish Research Council.

The Master programme, 120 credits,  offers a broad media-oriented perspective on questions of narration, meaning making, learning, and truthfulness in art and communication. We welcome students from all over the world and from diverse backgrounds. The programme is offered online (distance learning) and on campus simultaneously. Several of the courses in the programme combine an intermedial or multimodal perspective with different media. The aim is for you to develop knowledge of relevant, intermedial and multimodal theories and methods, primarily within the fields included in the intermedial research centre (IMS) at the faculty.

Read more about the distance version here.

Read more about the campus version here.

If you wish to take an undergraduate or graduate course with us, you can see a list of current and upcoming courses with intermedial or multimodal perspectives taught in another language than Swedish (mainly English) below. Some courses are distance courses with no mandatory on-campus meetings and can be studied from abroad. 

For information about courses taught in Swedish, please see our Swedish page.

Relevant links:

• For more information about distance courses, click here.
• For questions about applying for courses in Sweden, please see the University Admissions website, mainly this page with guides and resources, and this FAQ.
• For general information about studying at Linnaeus University, please click here.

Within Linnaeus University

• Center for Studies in Popular Culture (PoCuS) | lnu.se
• Fojo Media Institute
• Research environment: A Challenged Democracy
• Research environment: Digital Transformations

National

• Multimodal Research Group Örebro University
• Division of Intermedia Studies, Lund University

Within Europe

• University of Edinburgh. Intermediality: Literature, Film and the Arts in Dialogue
• University of Liège. CIPA - Centre Interdisciplinaire de Poétique Appliquée.
• Literature Among Media, Aar­hus Univer­sity
• Fin­nish Cent­re of Ex­cel­len­ce in Research on In­ter­sub­jec­tivity in In­terac­tion, University of Helsinki
• Nordic Network for Literature and Mediality
• Opera in Scandinavia, Sibelius Academy
• Ins­titut für Kirc­hen­musik und Musik­wis­sens­chaft, University of Greifswald
  Musik und Gen­der, Hochs­chule für Theater, Musik und Medien, Hanover
• Research Group in Media Studies, Jan-Noël Thon as Chair, University of Tübingen
• Music and Media, In­ter­national Musicological Society, Ut­recht University
• The RECODE Team, Univer­sity of Shef­field
• Metap­hors in end-of-life care (MELC), Lan­cas­ter Univer­sity
• Research group in In­ter­mediality, Ag­nes Pet­hö as Chair, Sapientia University
• Research group in Film and Inter­mediality, Claudiu Tur­cus as Chair, Babes-Bolyai University
• The Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform
• Multimodalitätsforschung in Bremen - Universität Bremen (uni-bremen.de)
• Journalistisches Seminar Mainz (uni-mainz.de)

Worldwide

• Department for Music and Theat­re Studies, Maseno Univer­sity
• National Ins­titute of Education, Nanayang Tech­nological Univer­sity
• Iconicity research group, Federal University of Juiz de Fora
• Iconicity in Lan­guage and Literature
• In­ter-Dis­cip­linary.Net
• In­ter­national Society for the Study of Self In­jury
• Sc­reenw­riting Research Net­work
• Word and Music As­sociation Forum