Julia Sonnevend

Education

  • PhD in Communications
    Columbia University, New York,  PhD expected in May 2013
    Courses: The Iconic Turn, Optic Theory, Social Impact of Media, Transparency and Democracy, Interwar Film and Photography; Post-Socialism in Post-Revolutionary East-Central Europe; Dis/ability Studies; Media and Information Management; Special Topics in Globalization; Communications and Public Life since the Reformation; The Origins of Modern Visual Culture; Mass-Mediated Global Politics; Problems in Communication Research; The Sociology of News
  • Master of Laws
    Yale Law School, New Haven, CT, June 2007
    Activities: The Information Society Project at Yale Law School, (faculty advisor: Jack M. Balkin)
    Courses: Information, Production, Regulation; Information Society; First Amendment; Information and Knowledge Policy; Access to Knowledge Practicum; Perspectives on Panoramas; Donald Judd; Cultural Sociology; Sexuality and the Law
  • Master of Arts in Aesthetics
    Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, June 2006, summa cum laude
    Areas of Study: visual culture, digital culture, visual representations of justice and law, cultural memory, cultural trauma
    Thesis: Law and Aesthetics (supervisor: Peter Gyorgy)
  • Master of Arts in German Studies
    Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, June 2006, summa cum laude
    Area of Study: contemporary German literature
    Thesis: The Narrative Art of Terezia Mora (supervisor: Daniel Lanyi)
  • Juris Doctor
    Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, July 2004, cum laude
    Areas of Study: visual representations of justice, law and performance, media law, access to knowledge, criminology
    Thesis: The Media Representation of Criminal Trials in the Digitally Networked Environment (supervisor: Csaba Kabodi)
  • Humboldt University Erasmus Student
    Humboldt University, Berlin, Fall term 2001/2002

Awards and Grants

  • 2011/2012 PepsiCo Junior Fellowship, Harriman Institute, Columbia University
  • 2009 and 2011 PepsiCo Travel and Research Grant of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University
  • 2009, 2010 and 2011 Ernő Kállai Scholarship, Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education
  • 2004 First of the Year Award, Law School, Eotvos Lorand University
  • 2004 Peter Balassa Best Student Paper Prize, Institute for Art Theory and Media Research for “The Staged Trial. Aesthetic and Communication Theory Approaches to TV Court Shows”
  • 2002 First of the Year Award, Law School, Eotvos Lorand University
  • 2001/2002 Erasmus Grant, Humboldt University, Berlin (European Union program for university students)
  • 1997 and 1998 Best student paper, National Student Writer Competition in Sarvar

Affiliations

  • Since February 2009 Student Fellow, Center on Organizational Innovation at Columbia University
  • Since February 2009 Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University
  • Since October 2008 Harriman Certificate Candidate, Harriman Institute at Columbia University
  • Since September 2008 Visiting Fellow, Information Society Project at Yale Law School

Teaching and Research Experience

Spring 2011 Teaching Assistant for the MS level course entitled Art of the Interview, instructor: Dean Nicholas Lemann, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University

Fall 2010 Teaching Assistant for the Masters level course entitled Evidence and Inference, instructor: Dean Nicholas Lemann, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University

Spring 2010 Teaching Assistant for Media Law, instructor: Stuart Karle and John Zucker, Journalism School at Columbia University

September, 2007 – February 2008 Resident Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project at Yale Law School

  • Leading a global project on digital education, writing a related white paper and presenting the paper at international conferences
  • Organizing the Harvard – MIT – Yale Cyberscholar Working Group
  • Participating in the Access to Knowledge Practicum
  • Recruiting future fellows

September, 2004 – September, 2008 Assistant professor, Department of Communications in the Institute for Art Theories and Media Research, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest (active teaching: 2004/2005, 2005/2006 and the spring term of 2008)

  • Courses:  Introduction to Visual Culture; Visual Representations of Justice and Law in Art and Media; The Image of Justice; Visual Codes: Susan Sontag; The Theory of Democratic and Participatory Culture; Global Media Policy; Media Criticism

Since November, 2004 – Editor of the peer-reviewed online journal Eastbound

Summer Schools

  • 17-27 July, 2011 Meisterklasse in Cultural Sociology, Konstanz
  • 10 – 22 July, 2005 Global Media Policy: Technology and New Themes in Media Regulation – The First Annenberg Philadelphia / Oxford Summer Institute, Oxford
  • 1-15 August, 2001 Media Policy Workshop – Humboldt University, Berlin

Publications

Essays and papers in English

Iconic Rituals: On the Experience of Encountering Images [Book chapter for the edited volume entitled Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, and Dominik Bartmanski]. Translations of Gottfried Boehm and Hans Belting for the same publication (co-translated with Dominik Bartmanski from German to English). Forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

With Michael Schudson: Any Questions? Sociolinguists study the changes in presidential press conferences over decades. – Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2011 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson: Snapshots of War: WikiLieaks isn’t the first site to publish controversial material from a war zone. – Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2010 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson: Philadelphia Story: A study in the City of Brotherly Love suggests what’s been lost, and what can be gained. – Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2010 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

‘Remembering Through Sharing’ in The New Everyday March/2010 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/the-new-everyday/remembering-through-sharing

With Michael Schudson: French Connections: What do different press styles have to do with distinct political cultures? – Columbia Journalism Review,  May/June 2010 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson:  True to Form: online journalism, like print journalism, can be a variety of things – Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2010 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson:  Beyond Transparency: Is More Information Always a Good Thing? - Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2010 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson: Mourning Becomes Electric – Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2009 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

With Michael Schudson: Opening Minds:  Can the Media Persuade Audiences to Embrace a Fresh Outlook? – Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2009 http://www.cjr.org/magazine/

Hungarian Publications

The Digital Flâneur – Cafe Babel, September 2009 http://www.cafebabel.hu/szamok/utca/sonnevend

Mumbai: The  Digital Images of Terrorism - Élet és Irodalom, February 13, 2009 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;22125

The Illusion of Being Close (On the Interrelations between Art History and Visual Culture Research) - Élet és Irodalom, August 22, 2008 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;20623

Do I Have a Post-Communist Identity? - Beszélő, April, 2008 http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/mennyire-vagyok-en-poszt-szoci

Re-Thinking National Culture - Élet és Irodalom, June 13, 2008 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;19977

When Will You Confirm My Pending Friend Request on Facebook? On the Theory of Democratic Culture - Élet és Irodalom,  April 4, 2008 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;19321

Google Earth as Hyper Panorama: The Aesthetization of Geography - Élet és Irodalom, September 7, 2007 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;17574

Let’s talk about sex, baby! (On Current Hungarian Feminist Debates) – Jelenkor, September 2007 http://www.jelenkor.net/main.php?disp=disp&ID=1319

The Abandoned City: New Orleans - Élet és Irodalom, May 25, 2007 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;16655

The Culture of Grief: On Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment (Exhibition in Tate Modern) - Élet és Irodalom, June 16, 2006 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;13713

Terri Schiavo the Hungarian Celebrity – Korunk, May, 2006 http://www.korunk.org/korunk/?q=node/8&ev=2006&honap=5&cikk=8208

Regarding the Face of a Terrorist: Visuality and Terrorism in the October Series of Gerhard Richter – Jelenkor, March 2006 http://www.jelenkor.net/main.php?disp=disp&ID=968

Illness and Society – Élet és Irodalom, September 16, 2005 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;11454

Representation of Police in the TV Show “Kekfeny” on the Hungarian Public Service Broadcaster – Beszélő, August 2005 http://beszelo.c3.hu/05/08/14sonnevend.htm

The Imagined Code: Representation of Law and Justice on the Hungarian Public Service Broadcaster – Élet és Irodalom, April 8, 2005 http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;10176

November Rain. Democratic Transformation of Hungary in 1989 through the Eyes of a Ten Year Old – Élet és Irodalom, December 10, 2004 (also translated into Vietnamese) http://www.es.hu/index.php?view=doc;9291

The Staged Trial. Aesthetic and Communication Theory Approaches to TV Court Shows – Beszélő, September 2004 http://beszelo.c3.hu/04/09/14sonnevend.htm

Book reviews in Hungarian

Works in progress

Co-editing with Christine Greenhow a forthcoming Information Society Project edited volume entitled Education and Social Media

Conference and Workshop Presentations

  • The Social Life of Forgotten Images: the Contested Images of the Hungarian Political Transition in Networked Public Spheres
  • The Etiology and Ecology of Post-Soviet Communication, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, May 8, 2010
  • Images We Do Not Remember
  • Limits of Memory Conference, The New School for Social Research, March 4, 2010
  • The Social Responsibility Paradigm: Hungarian Television Criticism Twenty Years after the Political Changes
  • Beyond East and West Conference, Central European University, June 26, 2009, Budapest
  • The Peculiar Lives of Newspaper Photographs
  • Cultural Sociology at the Crossroads Conference, Yale Center for Cultural Sociology, May 8, 2009, New Haven
  • Digital Education, Innovation and Copyright Regulation
  • Third International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training. An Annual Event for Developing eLearning Capacities in Africa, June 2008, Accra, Ghana
  • The Pictorial Revolution: Towards an Iconology for Digital Photos
    Information Society Project Speaker Series, Yale Law School, February, 2008, New Haven
  • Pictorial Revolution: The Visual Memory of the Law in the Convergence Era
    Supper Culture Club at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, January 22, 2008, New Haven
  • The Digital Education and Information Policy Initiative: Towards the Development of Exceptions to and Limitations on Copyright in the Realm of Digital Education
    Open Education 2007 Conference, September 2007, Logan (Utah)
  • MyLegalVisualMemory: Visual Memory of the Law in the Convergence Era
    Harvard – MIT –Yale Cyberscholar Workshop, April 2007, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University
  • Distance Education and Intellectual Property: Legal Obstacles to Capacity Building
    With Katherine McDaniel, Digital Learning Asia, February 2007, Putrajaya, Malaysia
  • Distance Education and Intellectual Property: Legal Obstacles to Capacity Building
    Poster presentation with Katherine McDaniel
    Fourth International Conference on Multimedia and Information and Communication Technologies in Education, October 2006, Seville
  • The Hungarian Media in a Globalizing Media Sphere
    Inclusion/Exclusion: 7th International Postgraduate Conference, February 2006, London
  • Law and Aesthetics, Law and Performance
    Criminal Law Workshop, Bibó István Center, Law School, ELTE University, November 2005, Budapest
  • Strafprozesse in elektronischen und digitalen Medien oder wie Recht und Ästhetik zueinander finden
    Symposium Berlin (Humboldt Universität) – Budapest (Law School, ELTE University), August 2005, Budapest
  • Comparative Transformations in Media Regulations: UK – Hungary
    Oxford Media Summer Symposium, July 2005, Oxford
  • Communication and Aesthetic Theory Approaches to Crime Shows
    Conference on Violence and Media, May 2005, Budapest

Workshops and Panels Organized

The Digital Education and Information Policy Initiative: Towards the Development of Exceptions to and Limitations on Copyright in the Realm of Digital Education

At the Internet Governance Forum, November 13, 2007, Rio de Janeiro

Co-organizers: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ministry of Education of Chile, Hungarian Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement, IP Justice, Fundação Getulio Vargas School of Law in Rio de Janeiro, American Society of Plant Biologists, Intel Corporation

The meeting intended to bring together the key stakeholders in the field of digital education from all around the world to discuss the various roadblocks that hinder the progress of digital educational activities.

The Political Economy of Digital Archives

At the Access to Knowledge II. Conference – April 28, 2007, Yale Law School

On the role of commercial archives in digitized cultural retrieval and their relationship to traditional memory institutions in constructing the cultural memory of the global community.

Harvard (Berkman Center for Internet and Society) – MIT (Comparative Media Studies Program) – Yale (Information Society Project) Cyberscholar Workshop

Monthly meeting for fellows and affiliates to discuss ongoing research. In the 2007/2008 academic year organized by Chris Conley (Harvard), Steve Schulze (MIT) and Julia Sonnevend (Yale).

Conferences organized

  • Conference Graz – Budapest: Discrimination in a Comparative Perspective
    Co-organizers: Law School, ELTE University, Budapest – Rechtwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Karl Franzens Universität, Graz, July 2003
  • Conference Berlin – Budapest: Environmentalism
    Co-organizers: Law School, ELTE University, Budapest – Rechtwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, August 2002

Languages

  • Hungarian: native
  • English: fluent, TOEFL, GRE (New York, 2009)
  • German: fluent, DSH Test (Berlin, Humboldt University, 2002); MA Degree in German Studies
  • Latin: intermediate