The ECREA Public Statement Committee’s mission is to produce statements of support or protest related to cases of violations of academic freedom and undue pressures on our members or academic communities in countries with a substantial ECREA membership. The Public Statement Committee will generally reacts to alerts coming from the membership but can also act on its own initiative. Members or Sections, Networks or Temporary Working Groups are invited to contact the Committee with alerts and proposals at info@ecrea.eu. Within the scope of its available resources, the Committee investigates the cases and draws up statements or endorses statements prepared by others. All statements are confirmed by and issued on behalf of the ECREA Executive Board.
The Public Statement Committee consists of Ilija Tomanic Trivundza and Murat Akser as members of the ECREA Executive Board and Koen Leurs as a representative of S/N/TWG management teams.
lija Tomanic Trivundza, president of ECREA
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An Associate Professor, he is a chair of Media Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he focuses on visual communication with a special focus on the social and political role of photography in contemporary mediated communication. He is also a co-editor of Membrana magazine on photography.
I was an active volunteer for Amnesty International Slovenia for six years and also worked for the organisation for one year as office manager and fundraising officer. I was one of the founding members of Edirisa Slovenia, a Slovene outpost of the Uganda-based NGO Edirisa, which focused on educational, media and development programmes for communities living around Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda. As a rather versed petition writer, I continue to sporadically advocate social justice and protests against state censorship and institutional abuses of human rights. Recently, I have realised that with my wife, we have, at least for the time being, successfully transferred the activism bug to our older daughter. I was involved in initiating the formation of the ECREA Public Statement Committee and have collaborated on drafting previous ECREA public statements.
Murat Akser, member of the ECREA Board
A lecturer at the School of Arts, Ulster University, UK, he holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Culture from York University, Canada. Previously he was an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey where he was the head of the Department of New Media. He was also one of the members of the local organizing committee of the IAMCR 2011 Conference in Istanbul.
I have been an active ECREA member particularly in the Communication and Democracy section. I am interested in media freedom in younger democracies such as Turkey. I have been carrying out research on the freedom of expression of journalists, citizen media, social movement media and hacktivism. My work on the subject has been published in the Middle East Journal of Communication and Culture, and New Media & Society. I took part in the Gezi Park protests of 2013 and documented media repression in Turkey since 2012. I am very vocal against abuses of media activists, journalists and academics’ freedoms both in Turkey and elsewhere (most recently I have helped and supported activists in Russia, Poland and Hungary). Given the international and democratic nature of our profession and association, I believe we have to be active in voicing the democratic media rights in oppressed media environments and condemning the wrongs of authoritarian practice by governments everywhere. I support the protection and mentoring of academics and post-graduate students from oppressed parts of the world, the creation of more collaborative projects and getting more joint publications contributed by our members.
Koen Leurs, the chair of the Diaspora, Migration and the Media section
An assistant professor in gender and postcolonial studies at the Graduate Gender Programme/Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, his research interests revolve around youth, migration, gender, diaspora and critical internet/data studies. Recently with Kevin Smets he guest edited a special issue on ‘Forced migration and digital connectivity’ for the journal Social Media + Society, and with Sandra Ponzanesi an issue on ‘Connected migrants’ for the journal Popular Communication. Together with Kevin Smets, Myria Georgiou, Saskia Witteborn and Radhika Gajjala, he is currently editing the SAGE Handbook of Media and Migration.
Alongside setting up my own research lines, and facilitating scholars to sustain critical dialogue on diaspora, migration and the media as part of ECREA, I also would like to take seriously my role as a public intellectual. With increased standing in the community, receiving tenure and obtaining grants, I have come to realize my symbolic and institutional power have grown and I would like to mobilize this power to speak out against violations of academic freedom and oppressions of academic communities. Being trained in feminist, critical-race and postcolonial studies, I am keen to publically scrutinize how such oppressions and violations often operate along the intersecting lines of gender, race, nationality, class and religion. I am also aware of the challenges of speaking for others without appropriating their voice, and I am aware of the tensions of taking a stance and engaging in public debate, while upholding an academic ethos. In addition to speaking out in solidarity with colleagues under threat, I would also advocate ECREA to take a stance in public debates on international affairs shaped by media and communication, with the so-called European refugee crisis as an important case in point.
