We’re proud to support our students as they share their scholarship across the globe. Each semester, the BCNM is able to offer a small subsidy for students attending the premiere conferences in their fields. To be eligible to apply, students must be presenting a paper or poster on their research at a professional conference. Grant amounts depend on the location of the conference and the number of applications received.
Application Requirements
If you are interested in applying, please send an email to lara [at] berkeley.edu with an attached PDF that includes the following:
- your name and department
- the conference name and location
- an abstract of your paper
- any other resources you will receive to support your travel
Our Spring 2018 awards are now closed. Fall 2018 applications are due by October 1, 2018.
Past Awards
Fall 2017
Harry Burson – for Sounding Out the Space 2017: An International Conference on the Spatiality of Sound, in Dublin, Ireland. In his paper, "Lost in Stereo: Stereophony, Stereoscopy, and the Construction of Virtual Spaces," Burson examines the relationship between sound and 3-D image to contrast the 'hyperreal, staged space of stereophony' and 'the uncanny, irreal space of stereoscopy.' Further, he considers how their intersections complicate existing theories of specialized listening, immersion, and presence.
Malika Imhotep – for the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference 2017, in Baltimore, Maryland. Imhotep brings a new media perspective to relevant conversations surrounding black women's rights activism, self-articulation, and social media in her paper, "Black Women’s Time(line) : #DefendBlackWomanhood as a site of black feminism’s continued conversation." To do so, she studies mission statements by organizations such as the Black Feminist Futures (2015), The Combahee River Collective (1974-7) and The Sojourners for Justice and Truth (1951) alongside black women’s reflections from their respective socio-cultural moments.
Will Payne – for The Future of Food Studies Conference, in St. Louis, Missouri. His paper, “The Zagat Survey as Class Strategy: Quantified Consumption and Urban Change in 1980s New York,” delves into one of the first forms of user-generated content (UGC) in Zagat's aggregation of ratings and reviews, and its effect on urban change and gentrification. In his research, Payne tracks Zagat's spreading of a "professional-class vision for the gentrification of the city’s post-industrial neighborhoods" and draws inspiration from Sharon Zukin, Richard Ocejo, and Neil Smith. He previously received a Spring 2017 grant for the American Association of Geographers (AAG).
Yairamaren Roman Maldonado – for the Imagining America Conference, in Davis, California. Following her Spring 2017 appearance at the Latin American Studies Association Conference: “Dialogues of Knowledge” in Lima, Perú, Roman Maldonado will be presenting her work in “Literatura y Narrativa Digitales en Puerto Rico” in a digital storytelling media session among other scholars. Roman Maldonado and the other scholars will also be discussing community-based research and its challenges, trust-building, and audiovisual objects, presenting digital storytelling as both method and genre.
Spring 2017
Justin Berner, Ph.D. Student in Spanish and Portuguese Department, DE in New Media – for the NYU, Columbia Graduate Conference | Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literature. “Waking up to a World in Color: Spanish Television Advertisements during La Transición” speaks to the evolution of Spanish television advertisements with the advancement of color television. Berner traces the trajectory of Spain’s shift to a democracy with consumerism as its core.
Lashon Daley – for the 2017 National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Annual Conference: 40 YEARS AFTER COMBAHEE: Feminist Scholars and Activists Engage the Movement for Black Lives, in Baltimore, MD. Daley, in “Black/Girlhood Imaginary,” presents a multidisciplinary analysis on young Black girls’ experiences in relation to “intersectionality.” Daley’s roundtable – which will discuss African American folktales and performance, the criminal justice system, and the Black-girl affect, among other topics – works to “disrupt the silences and illuminate the space between Black girlhood and Black womanhood.”
Kaitlin C. Forcier – for the 2017 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Chicago, IL. Forcier will participate on a panel, “Media Archaeologies: Theorizing the Elemental.” In her paper, “Smell-O-Vision Then and Now: theorizing olfactory cinema,” Forcier addresses the manifestation of scent in film, such as in 4DX cinema, and how the study of smell influences studies of form, temporality, and spectacle.
Grace D. Gipson – for the National Council of Black Studies in Houston, TX. Gipson’s paper, titled “She Is Here!!: Black (Female) Bodies in the Future,” highlights Afrofuturists and their deep-set foundations in science fiction, historical fiction, technology, and spirituality. With an emphasis on female voices of the African diaspora, Gipson analyzes creative and popular mediums, such as Twitter hashtags, video, and visual art.
Jennifer Higgs, Doctoral student in Education – for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX. Higgs questions the integration of new media in K-12 spaces, identifying tensions between learning and digital talk. Her paper is titled, “A National Study of Talking to Learn Across Digital and Face-to-Face Contexts in K-12 Classrooms.”
Ryan Ikeda – for the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in Victoria, BC, Canada. In his paper, “The Inescapable Digital,” Ikeda posits the avant-garde, for contemporary media artists and digital humanists alike, as arrested in its development given the separation between technology and aesthetics. Ikeda examines technology’s influence in determining the position of art and “our sense of aesthetic judgment” in the 21st century.
Molly Nicholas – for the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Denver, Co. Nicholas underscores the creative materiality of light in the design of electronic objects. She and her team will introduce a computational design and fabrication process they developed that stimulates new kinds of interactions with physical light such as the creation of custom luminaires.
Will Payne – Ph.D. Student in Geography, DE in New Media – for the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in Boston, MA. His paper is titled “Location-Based Services Avant La Lettre: The Zagat Survey and Quantified Lifestyles in 1980s New York.” Payne traces the contradictions inherent in the first “crowd-sourced” restaurant guide, the Zagat Survey, showing how New York City professionals adopted social science survey methods and microcomputing technology to consolidate their cultural power and reshape the city. Payne is also organizing a three-session series of papers on the topic of “Real Estate Technologies: Genealogies, Frontiers, & Critiques.”
Yairamaren Roman Maldonado – for the Latin American Studies Association Conference: “Dialogues of Knowledge” in Lima, Perú. Roman Maldonado’s paper investigates themes of contemporary colonialism and identity in stories of everyday life by analyzing discourse among authors of contemporary literature, specifically Jose Raul “Gallego” and Eduardo Lalo, and young people’s digital narratives. This past summer, Roman Maldonado completed a pilot workshop on contemporary literature and digital storytelling offered to Puerto Rican youth at a community-based organization. The participating youth were trained to critically use digital storytelling to formulate their original narratives about everyday life in their communities. This article will present preliminary analyses of the group discussions and a close reading of a collective digital story. Furthermore, Roman Maldonado discusses the scope and limitations of using a methodology that develops scholarship rooted in cultural agency from the field of Puerto Rican literary studies. Hence, considering not only the island’s lettered class views but also placing the importance of popular voices and future generations at the center of the discussion regarding decolonization.
John Scott – for the IMS Global Learning Impact Leadership Institute in Denver, CO. Scott utilizes gamification and social learning analytics in online learning to detangle the configurations of a social activity leaderboard tool called the “Engagement Index.” Scott provides reflections on the usage of the Engagement Index as a grading system and how it can become situated in course experiences as a gamification component.
Fall 2016
Ritwik Banerji – Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnomusicology – for the International Computer Music Conference in Utretcht, Netherlands, to present a paper, “Balancing Defiance and Cooperation: The Design and Human Critique of a Virtual Free Improviser.”
Bélgica del Río – PhD Student in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies – for the American Society for Theater Research (ASTR) as part of a group presenting on Video Games and Gaming: Towards a Transmedial Analysis, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her paper is “The Performance of Avatars in Video Games and Motion/Performance Capture”.
Juliana Friend – PhD student in Anthropology, DE in New Media – for 59th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association: “Imagining Africa at the Center: Bridging Scholarship, Policy, and Representation in African Studies” in Washington, DC. Her paper is “Cure/Contagion: Redefining the “health” in public health through online gay activism in Senegal.”
Grace D. Gipson – Doctoral student in African American and African Diaspora Studies – for the Superhero Identities Symposium at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, in Melbourne Australia. She’ll be presenting “Road to Recovery: Fighting through Trauma and Abuse in Netflix’s Jessica Jones series”
Jennifer Higgs – Doctoral student in Education – for the Digital Media and Learning Conference, in Irvine, California.
Cesar Torres – PhD student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – for the User Interface Software and Technology Symposium, in Tokyo, Japan. His paper is “Ellustrate: Designing, Sketching, and Fabricating Circuits through Digital Exploration.”