Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)

At the Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS) we explore human communication as multimodal and intermedial. All communication is multimodal, as it integrates distinct semiotic modes such as text, images, sounds, and even colours and gestures in complex multimodal meaning-making processes.  All communication is intermedial as different media products relate to each other and bear traces of other media, just like narratives and ideas travel across different media types.

Intermediality and multimodality have developed independently as separate approaches to address the ‘mixedness’ of media. In IMS, we strive to explore and make use of these approaches as complementary frameworks. We believe that a combined understanding of multimodal simultaneity and intermedial interrelations provide a fruitful friction with great potential for media studies in the broad sense. With this double awareness, we aim to contribute to the development of more holistic media analyses where fine-grained analysis of the mixedness of human communication can be complemented with a view of the role of media as social infrastructure and institutions.

In our research, we particularly focus on the development of four interrelated areas, which you can read more about and see examples of in the menu below.

Different media create meaning in different ways using different resources such as colour, sound, text, image, and sound. In IMS, we explore the influence of medial combination and transformation on generating (new) knowledge and information, in interaction with active recipients and social contexts, and we explore how creativity may take part in this process through analysis and artistic research.

Meaning making is fundamental to most aspects of media studies in the broad sense of the topic, but below we have listed the IMS projects that most specifically deal with questions of meaning making.

Narration is one important and specific form of making meaning. Not only are narratives popular in different media, in literature, film, games, and social media: narratives are important cognitive tools that enhance our understanding of processes of the court, in teaching, in ideology, politics, and in science. In IMS we study how the basic workings of narration are shaped in different media and how they are used in different communicative contexts.

Below are the IMS projects that most specifically deal with questions of narration.

In education, media transformation and combination is constantly present. At IMS we explore how learning content and concepts are narrativized or transformed within and between different media, such as when chemical processes are both illustrated using mathematical concepts, diagrams, and psychical experiments. Non-verbal resources can make visible what is absent, and they can be used to visualize abstract concepts. Understanding multimodal and intermedial aspects of communication are therefore necessary for developing and evaluating different methods of learning.

Below are the IMS projects that most specifically deal with questions of learning.

Truthfulness in mediation, and truth claims of media, are in dire need of multimodal and intermedial exploration. In IMS we investigate truthfulness in media transformation and how truth claims are constructed in different media. We explore how to approach the pressing questions of fake beyond the undermined binary of fact and fiction in a time of ‘alternative truths’ and how scientific research is transmediated (in the sense of information being transformed and re-mediated) in poems, novels, games and films. This connects our research to relevant ethical issues in journalism, documentary film, and court communication.

Below are the IMS projects that most specifically deal with questions of truthfulness.

All pressing global challenges are connected to media. It is via media that information – and misinformation – is spreading, that we make sense of the world and communicate, and it is via media that artists push boundaries and create interventions.  Transdisciplinary research clusters at IMS explore intermedial and multimodal aspects of current social challenges such as: the ways that media like film, literature and games mediate scientific knowledge about the climate crisis (IMS Green), intermedial and multimodal aspects of journalism and news in a digitized society (IMS News), contested cultural heritage and memory cultures in the digital age (IMS Memory), and the role of media and modes in education (IMS Literacy).

Media Impact is a series of talks that give you the chance to take part in current research on how media choice affects communication, knowledge and meaning in art, popular culture, and media.

Learn more about the importance of being surprised, how knowledge is conveyed through computer games, what we do when we sing, how novels, films or poetry communicate the climate crisis, how music affects journalism, and what violence and classical music have in common.

All talks are ca. 15 minutes long and can be found either below under the heading IMS media, or on our YouTube channel (note, not all talks are available in both places).

The talks are intended for everyone with an interest in media, culture and communication.

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.

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

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.

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 Kim Carlborg (kim.carlborg@lnu.se).

Within Linnaeus University

• CHILLL
• Center for Didactic Research (OBS in Swedish)
• Center for Cooperative Palliative for Care

Nationwide

• CERTEC, Faculty of Engineering LTH
• Visual Interpretation in Research and Practice, Lunds UniversityMultimodality. Transformations and Representations in Science Classrooms, Lin­köpings University
• DART, Sahl­grens­ka University Hospital
• Medium Seminars, Stock­holm Univer­sity
• Mediatization of Culture and Everyday Life, Riks­ban­kens Jubileums­fond

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

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

Get a quick impression of research projects at IMS through these brief interviews with IMS researchers.