Steffen Moestrup on his one-week stay at Lebanese American University

By/ Steffen Moestrup DMJX

I just came back from a one-week stay at Lebanese American University and I am still high from the experience. My visit took place as part of MD Lab, which is a yearly event that aims to develop media and digital literacy education in the region by providing the needed training, curricular material and resources. The first couple of days I attended seminars, lectures and workshop where I met the students, faculty and journalists from the Arab region including countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Palestine and Lebanon. It was very enriching and thought-provoking to hear about their experiences with journalism in the region. When I did my lecture on video storytelling where the journalist becomes a character in the piece itself, I was met with many comments and questions both during and after the presentation. My students were highly engaged in this topic and it was clear that some found it very tempting while others found the approach highly problematic. I truly appreciate such discussions as they always enlarge and enrich my own perspectives on my research. Later on, I did a workshop with the students where they pitched ideas for a video production or a data visualization project they had to do in the following four days. Ideas spanned the region and including in-depth work on child beggars in Beirut, Palestine teenage prisoners in Israeli prisons as well as the phenomenon of collective memory among the Syrian, Armenian and Palestinian communities of Lebanon. I greatly enjoyed discussing the projects with the students and look very much forward to seeing the final results.

I feel very honored and privileged to have had this opportunity and I leave Beirut with many ideas, thoughts and – most of all – many new friends whom I will hopefully get to meet and work with again.