Camila Garcia Kieling is a PhD candidate in Social Communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of the State of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. She received a travel grant to present her paper "Press and institutional breakdowns: expressions of the imaginary in journalistic narratives" as part of a panel on "Narratives and Imaginary about Iberian and Latin American Dictatorships in the 20th Century" to the Communication and History Section.
In her reflections below she emphasises the multilingual nature of IAMCR 2017 and volunteers to help make sure that future IAMCR conferences are at least bilingual.
It was a privilege to be present in this South American edition of the event. Going beyond the geographic question, IAMCR facilitated the dialogue with theories and practices that speak of difficult and deep questions of the field of the research in communication: the western centrism, the racism, the linguistic barriers. Once again, an open and multicultural meeting was held.
The keynote speech of Omar Rincón was brilliant and set up the agenda of the conference.
The venue was great: Cartagena de Índias Convention Center provided a great service. All attendants having lunch at the same place was great because it made possible a more relaxed interaction and the contact with local cuisine. The only complaints about the venue are: some rooms had acoustics problems and the lecturers could have been warned about the small size of the screens available for projection in time to adapt their slides.
In my opinion, the congress should always be at least bilingual (English / Spanish). This is an opportunity when everybody has to make an effort to understand each other. In the case of my section (History), some of the sessions were naturally in Spanish because the chair and the presenters were native speakers. This caused some problems for English speakers (some of them just left the room). In order to solve it, I think that in later conferences each group could organize a way to make the sessions available to everyone: translations via slides, digital or printed files with translated summaries, consecutive translations... As a speaker of English, Spanish and Portuguese, I volunteer to help to make it work!
Back in Brazil, I am fulfilled with new experiences, readings and friends. There were very important contributions to my research (it was the first presentation with the results of my doctoral thesis), to my studies and to me as an individual.
It was a pleasure to meet you all. Congratulations for the remarkable conference and thank you for the travel grants that made possible for me to be there. Hope see you soon, maybe in Oregon!
- Camila Garcia Kieling, Porto Alegre, Brazil
IAMCR travel grants are funded with a percentage of all IAMCR membership payments plus the voluntary contributions of IAMCR members and supporters.
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