Medea Vox

The internet is filled with stories of ghosts, ghouls and monsters, as well as stories that claim to be authentic evidence of hauntings, curses and possessions. In this episode (recorded in 2022), internet horror researchers Erika Kvistad (University of South-Eastern Norway) and Line Henriksen (Malmö University) talk about the ghosts that haunt our digital technologies, and what happens when a horror hoax ages.

Today, we meet three people who have gone from passion for sustainability – to action for sustainability. The guests are all alumni from the Leadership for Sustainability master's program at Malmö University: Kevalin Saksiamkul, Chinomnso Onwunta and Paolo Nardi Fernandez. Together they have started the company Futurely, a consultancy that works with organizations to assess and co-envision how businesses can be sustainability pioneers. Interviewer is Hope Witmer, associate professor in Leadership and Organization at Malmö University.

Today, we meet three people who have gone from passion for sustainability – to action for sustainability. The guests are all alumni from the Leadership for Sustainability master's program at Malmö University: Kevalin Saksiamkul, Chinomnso Onwunta and Paolo Nardi Fernandez. Together they have started the company Futurely, a consultancy that works with organizations to assess and co-envision how businesses can be sustainability pioneers. Interviewer is Hope Witmer, associate professor in Leadership and Organization at Malmö University.

In this Medea Vox episode, we talk about sex, intimacy and robots. The basis of the discussion are so-called Real Dolls, which are hyper-realistic sex dolls. Professor Jeffrey Bardzell has studied how people describe their interactions with these dolls and their motivations for using them. This research can help us understand how to design for intimacy, sexuality and self-care.

Dance is more than physical exercise. Dance is learning about cultures and getting to know yourself. Dance educator and Afro-diasporic dance expert Moncell Durden says that "Teaching dance is teaching empathy – dance is everywhere, it comes from everyone." In this Medea Vox episode, we talk about hip-hop, cultural appropriation and being h-u-e-m-a-n.

New research shows that data centers are not the jackpot that local politicians and energy companies claim they are: They don't create many jobs, they are a burden to the environment and the electricity networks, and they provide little benefit to local communities. So why all the hype when there's a new data center coming to town? In this Medea Vox episode, media researcher Julia Velkova shares her research on data centers.

Would you rather starve next week when the economy crashes, or in 50 years when the ecosystem collapses? In this Medea Vox episode, we discuss the graphic novel The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet, which has been described as a unique combination of scholarly research and creative writing with the comics medium. With scholars Patrick McCurdy and Temi Odumosu.

Scholars Simon Niedenthal and Michelle Westerlaken talk about our sense of smell. Can practicing smelling things delay dementia? Why is it so hard to use odors in video games? And what do zombies really smell like?

Scholars Daniela K. Rosner and Per Linde discuss why women’s design contributions are often excluded in the history of engineering and innovation. They then move on to discuss a project where menstrual product dispensers are placed in public settings – a project that explores collective responsibility for public Internet of Things applications.

Eating animals is outdated. In this episode, designers and PhD students Michelle Westerlaken and Erik Sandelin discuss how to move towards a society that does not treat other animals as lesser beings. Underlying the discussion is the notion of speciesism, which is the oppression or exploitation of animals on the grounds of belonging to another species – similar to racism and sexism.