Peter Dahlgren Excellent Dissertation Award
The award
We value the academic theses in Media and Communication Studies. As part of that, we reward the theses that rise above and beyond with the Peter Dahlgren Excellent Dissertation Award. These dissertations have all been publicly defended and received the highest grades. To be nominated for the award, the highest mark is not enough. All cited theses are remarkable works that extend beyond the requirements of the grades.
Excellent MSc Dissertations
Before instituting the Peter Dahlgren Excellent Dissertation Award, Media and Communication Studies at Lund University published the series Excellent MSc Dissertations. It featured postgraduate dissertations from students who graduated from the Master's Programme in Media and Communication Studies in 2008-2023. The texts included had been presented and evaluated as part of the final thesis exams and awarded top grades. Finally, they were revised and edited for publication in Excellent MSc Dissertations (Förtjänstfulla examensarbeten i medie och kommunikationsvetenskap in Swedish).
With Excellent MSc Dissertations, we hope to inspire future students to write dissertations and contribute to debates inside and outside of academia on media, communication and cultural studies. All issues in this series make us think, question and understand ourselves within the socio-cultural and mediated environment in which we live.
The following publications in the series are available digitally:
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2023 (PDF, new tab), edited by Michael Bossetta
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2022 (PDF, new tab), edited by Michael Bossetta
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2021 (PDF, new tab), edited by Michael Bossetta
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2020 (PDF, new tab), edited by Joanna Doona
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2019 (PDF, new tab), edited by Deniz Duru
Excellent MSc Dissertations 2018 (PDF, new tab), edited by Deniz Duru
About Peter Dahlgren
Peter Dahlgren is a Professor Emeritus of Media and Communication Studies at Lund University, and an honorary doctorate at the University of Lorraine, France, and the University of Bucharest, Romania. An important influence on colleagues and students alike, his work has focused on media and democracy, studied through the lens of late modern social and cultural theory. As such, his impact on the development of media and communication studies at Lund University - and beyond - cannot be overstated.
Professor Dahlgren’s research addressed democratic participation in relation to digital media, exploring factors that promote and prevent civic engagement. His focus carried an ethos of friendly and empirically based critical inquiry, which is evident in his impressive research and the Media and Communication Studies environment at Lund University. Specifically, he studied the circumstances of young citizens, the evolution of public intellectuals, the use of media in protest strategies, the changing circumstances of journalism, the significance of cosmopolitanism as an analytic lens for globalized participation, and the subjectivity of civic agency.
More recently, Professor Dahlgren explored civic involvement in the political process and related to that, the significance of the media. The notion of identity is central as it pertains to the emergence of a civic or political self. To this, he added perspectives on the crises of democracy and the changing character of politics, not least regarding the emergence of new forms of political engagement and civic practices
The research has resulted in approximately 130 articles, several anthologies, and eight single-authored books such as The Political Web (Palgrave, 2013), Media and Political Engagement (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Television and the Public Sphere (Sage, 1995), and most recently, Media Engagement, co-authored with Annette Hill (Routledge, 2022). Dahlgren has also been a member of the Editorial Board of some of the most reputable journals in the field of communication and media such as Critical Studies in Media Communication, Digital Journalism, International Journal of Electronic Governance, Journalism Studies, Javnost/The Public, Media, Culture & Society, Questions de Communication, Reseaux, and The European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Active in European academic networks and events, an outstanding keynote speaker, and an engaged teacher, Dahlgren has been a visiting scholar at several universities, including the Université Paris 2, Université de Grenoble 3, the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and the University of Pennsylvania.
