Introduction: Mobility, Mediatization and New Methods of Knowledge Production

This special issue of Culture Unbound focuses on three themes central to contemporary dynamics of culture: mobility, mediatization and methods of knowledge production. Much cultural research has investigated how mobility and mediatization intervene in different social spheres and processes. This issue, however, seeks to shift the perspective by exploring the ways in which knowledge production and dissemination become related to mobility and mediatization. Growing possibilities of international exchange, open access publishing and digital technologies have created new methods of gathering and analysing data, as well as of presenting research. Yet, the intensifying mobilities and rapid changes in publishing platforms affect the research process itself and the relations of power and dependencies in the world of research. The background of this issue is a network project entitled ‘Everyday life of research in the mediatization era’, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences. A series of workshops in three countries were central in advancing the discussion on these three themes. The first one, ‘Mobility: the Travelling Researcher’ took place in Sydney in November 2015, followed by ‘(Ex) Changing Methods’ in Amsterdam in November 2016 and finally ‘Publishing and Mediatization’ in Norrköping in June 2017. These workshops were in themselves acts and embodiments of mobility, bringing together scholars from several collaborating environments at different sites to reflect on the conditions of our own work. Looking at mobility, therefore, appeared as a proper place to begin. Academics from Sweden, Australia and Germany gathered to discuss how today’s cultural researchers are becoming more mobile as research funders are increasingly investing in internationalisation. Individual researchers are given opportunities—or must meet expectations—to work outside their home countries, and contribute to an ever-growing number of projects con-