Berber Hagedoorn as ZeMKI Fellow in Bremen

In the autumn of 2025, the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen welcomes Dr. Berber Hagedoorn as a Visiting Research Fellow. Hagedoorn is Assistant Professor in Media Studies and Audiovisual Culture at the University of Groningen, where she specialises in the reuse of audiovisual materials from television archives and the impact of media practices on cultural memory. Her research brings together digital and analogue perspectives, analysing how media technologies contribute to the ways societies remember and narrate their past.

At ZeMKI, Hagedoorn will collaborate with the Labs “Media Change and Long-Term Transformation Processes” and “Datafication and Mediatization”. She will work closely with Rieke Böhling, Christian Schwarzenegger, and Andreas Hepp to explore intersections between traditional and digital memory practices. Her fellowship project, titled “Island Memories: Exploring the Intersection of Local and Digital Memory Practices,” examines how local exhibitions and digital platforms shape collective memory on the North Sea islands of Schiermonnikoog in the Netherlands and Spiekeroog in Germany.

Through a comparative analysis of physical exhibitions and digital storytelling on platforms such as Instagram, Hagedoorn and Böhling investigate how memory is constructed across local and translocal contexts. Drawing on media and memory studies, the project analyses how audiovisual archives and user-generated media contribute to the circulation of cultural memory. The research combines exhibition studies, digital ethnography, and archival analysis to trace how communities use media to construct and reinterpret the past.

Hagedoorn’s research engages with questions central to ZeMKI’s interdisciplinary work on mediatization and historical communication. By studying how cultural memory is shaped through both analogue and digital practices, she highlights the complex relationship between archival materials, media technologies, and collective remembrance. Her collaboration with ZeMKI researcher Rieke Böhling will also contribute to methodological innovation in analysing translocal and cross-media memory practices.

In her teaching and public engagement, Hagedoorn emphasises media literacy and critical reflection on how audiovisual archives shape historical understanding. She encourages students and media professionals to identify possible biases embedded in audiovisual materials and to consider how such biases impact perceptions of history. At ZeMKI, she will present her findings at the ZeMKI Research Seminar, contributing to broader discussions on the role of media in constructing cultural memory.

Hagedoorn has played a key role in several collaborative networks, including EUscreen, CLARIAH, and ECREA, which connect academic institutions with cultural heritage organisations and media professionals. Building on this experience, her work at ZeMKI will strengthen interdisciplinary connections and develop sustainable approaches to studying cultural memory across media contexts.

The fellowship offers Hagedoorn the opportunity to advance her research on audiovisual archives, cultural memory, and digital media practices within ZeMKI’s dynamic environment. Her collaboration with scholars at Bremen is expected to generate valuable insights into how local and digital media practices interact to sustain shared understandings of the past.