The Media Mapper project is accepting proposals for the Spring Semester Symposium, which will be held on April 17, 2026, at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Please submit your proposals to Ennuri Jo (ennuri.jo@asc.upenn.edu) by Monday, January 12, 2026 11:59pm EST. 

CARGC invites early-career film and media scholars, doctoral candidates, and multimodal media practitioners to try out a new digital humanities tool, Media Mapper, and present their creation to the Annenberg and the UPenn community in CARGC’s Spring Semester Symposium. 

Media Mapper 1.0 is an online application that places media objects on an interactive global map. Users can browse the map to view pins that refer to specific texts. You can learn more about Media Mapper here: https://mediamapper.app. On its own, media mapper is an empty skeleton application that is meant to work only with a given set of geospatial data. Aqueous Earth Catalog, made by Ennuri Jo (postdoctoral fellow, CARGC), is the flagship mapping project of Media Mapper: please visit https://aqueous.earth to see it in action. 

Selected applicants will participate in a series of virtual workshops, where they will build their own map by using Media Mapper with their own dataset. These sessions will include hands-on instructions on how to engineer the map for your dataset, and we will exchange feedback and ideas on each others’  deployment of the media mapper. 

Media Mapper is a work-in-progress and an ongoing project, with more functionalities on the way. The feedback from the working group will be used for future builds of Media Mapper: you will have an opportunity to discuss its new functionalities. 

We are looking for projects that explore media practices and objects on a global scale with an emphasis on the Global South. Priority will be given to projects that engage with ecological and environmental discourse; those working on Blue Humanities are especially welcome. After the workshop and the event, workshop participants’ maps will be added to the Media Mapper website, with everyone’s permission. Upon agreement, the maps (and/or the corresponding essays or multimedia texts) may be prepared into a dossier for publication.  

Please email Ennuri Jo at ennuri.jo@asc.upenn.edu if you have any questions. Proposals should be emailed by Monday, January 5, 11:59pm EST. 

Please submit a proposal to:

1. Join the working group and workshop your own application of the Media Mapper (the number of workshop participants will be limited to 9 people). 

AND,

2. Present your creation at the Spring Semester Symposium (in-person) at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Two of the nine workshop participants will present their mapping projects to the members of the Annenberg School of Communication community in a half-day symposium, to be held April 17, 2026. 

To join the working group and/or present your work at the Symposium*, please share your project with us according to the following guidelines:

1. Title of your research project and/or proposed title for your map

2. 1-2 page abstract of your project, including description of your research and what you want to accomplish with a geo-visual representation of your work

3. your name, institutional affiliation / location**, and email address

4. Any references for your project or your past work relevant to creating the map, if at all (prev. Written or multimodal publications, artist statements for creative works, etc.)

5. Any familiarity or experience with mapping tools (arcGIS, Mapbox, etc.), or web development (neither are required; those with zero experience are welcome)

6. Please select one or two of the following options, and confirm your availability (please copy-paste the statements and make adjustments as needed):

• I will participate in the virtual workshops only: I can participate in the monthly 1 hour workshops

• I would like my project to be considered for the Symposium: I will be available for the in-person presentation on April 17. 

*You are welcome to join the working group without committing to the Symposium, depending on your availability.

**Depending on your location we may be able to provide a travel stipend for Symposium presenters, especially for the precariously employed scholars.