With just a little over a year left until the next NordMedia conference (13–15 August 2025), it’s our pleasure to introduce the dynamic duo who will co-chair the event: Susana Tosca and Lene Heiselberg from the University of Southern Denmark. Take a moment to familiarise yourself with both researchers and hear their thoughts on how they feel about organising the event. And keep an eye out for more conference news! We’ll be revealing the theme of NordMedia25 before the summer break.
Lene Heiselberg, shown on the left in the picture, is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Journalism, SDU. She is an audience researcher studying media and journalism reception. Lene Heiselberg has more than ten years of experience as an applied audience researcher focusing on audio and television and was formerly employed at The Danish Broadcasting Corporation. Her tight collaboration with industry partners includes translating study findings into actionable recommendations for professional journalistic practices.
Lene states: “As co-chair of the forthcoming NordMedia 2025 conference, I experience a mix of emotions, encompassing both excitement and nervousness. The excitement stems from the opportunity to shape the academic discourse, facilitate networking, and highlight emerging research. Conversely, nervousness is also prevalent due to the responsibility of meeting the expectations of the Nordic academic community, and the inherent pressure of ensuring the conference’s success. I guess this experience of excitement and nervousness reflects the complex, multifaceted nature of managing a significant academic event. Therefore, I am glad, that there is a big team of academics and administrative staff around Susana and me”.
Susana Tosca, shown on the right in the picture, is a Professor of Media Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, SDU. She is currently the PI of three projects investigating different facets of how media entertainment shapes the rhythms of our daily lives and our encounters with cultural heritage. The projects are Digital Entertainment Machine (Independent Research Fund Denmark), Popular Culture Imaginaries in the Museum (Augustinus Foundation) and Transmedial Imaginaries of Travel (Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science). Her research area has been the reception of digital media since she defended her doctoral dissertation on digital literature in 2001. Other objects of study throughout the years have been hypertext, digital art, computer games, and transmedial worlds, with a special interest in Japanese popular culture products. Theoretically, Susana works from an aesthetic-reception oriented perspective, and she has contributed to starting and developing the fields of digital literature, computer games, and transmediality. Methodologically, she combines an aesthetic approach (close readings, semiotics) with qualitative methods to analyse reception, such as ethnography or interviews. She has been experimenting with arts-based research and creative writing in academic settings.
What are Susana’s feelings about taking on a leadership role in organising the conference?
“I have been part of organising other big conferences, so I tread into this role with a sense of dread. All jokes aside, there is an amazing administrative support team at SDU that will make sure that we do not have to deal with all the problems alone, so I am looking forward to doing this together with them. Sharing the role of chair with Lene is also very much in the spirit of this conference, where all the divisions and temporary groups mean that there it is a truly collaborative effort. Maybe that is our main job, to connect people, and make sure that everybody has gotten all the messages so we can create the best possible framework for the research exchange to occur. So far, it has been lots of fun to think about the conference theme and possible activities together with Lene and our respective colleagues. We each represent a research group, since Media and Journalism are located at different faculties in our university, so for us, it is also an opportunity for internal synergy and bridge-building. We are looking forward to welcoming everybody to Odense and our beautiful campus”, she says.