Eggo Müller is Professor of Media and Communication at the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University. He graduated from the Free University Berlin and received his PhD in Media Studies from the University of Hildesheim (Germany) in 1987 with a study of TV dating shows. Current research includes environmental media, big data in in extractive agricultural systems, food communication, and cultural pathways to sustainable, just and healthy futures. His projects are attached to Utrecht University's strategic research themes Pathways to Sustainability (research community Future Food), Institutions for Open Societies (research platform Fair Transitions), and to Utrecht University's Network for Environmental Humanities.

Currently, he is involved in two projects, the NWO-funded project Food-related Lifestyles in Youth together with colleagues from Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, and a Pathways to Sustainability project on Ecocide together with colleagues from Legal Sciences and other faculties.

He was leader of the EU-funded project European History Reloaded invesitgating the re-use and appropriation of digitized material shared online by audiovisual archives. The project was a follow up on the EU-funded project EUscreenXL, a cooperation of 32 European television archives, software developers and universities to make European audiovisual heritage accessible online. His earlier research and teaching centered on television in transition, new screen cultures, popular culture, and participatory cultures in the changing media ecology.

 

Curent projects

Food-related Livestyles in Youth (NWO-funded, free competition, 2022-2027)

The present-day food system is a key driver of climate change and biodiversity loss, making it imperative for populations to shift towards more sustainable diets. The involvement of youth in this transition is vital because they are in a formative period where their identities, values, and norms, including their food behaviours, are being shaped. Special attention should be paid to youth in practical education because they are often overlooked in existing studies, yet evidence suggests they may lack the necessary resources to support dietary changes, resulting in lower levels of pro-environmental food-related behaviours. The aim of the FLY (Food-related Lifestyles in Youth) project is to study how sustainable food-related lifestyles and underlying factors develop in early adolescence, particularly in Dutch youth in practical education, how these spread in social networks, and to develop community-level intervention strategies to support youths’ transition to sustainable food-related behaviours. Read more about the project here or go to the Dutch project website here.

 

Project Ecocide (2023-2025)

The project aims to impact national and international discussions regarding Ecocide by further developing and integrating interdisciplinary insights in a Knowledge Hub at Utrecht University. 

Ecocide refers to acts that (may) result in severe, widespread and/or long-term damage to the environment. In the current era of unprecedented threats to the environment, including potential mass extinction, the criminalization of ecocide is garnering increased attention.  This can be compared to the recognition of genocide following WW2, which raised social awareness and helped make it the ‘crime of all crimes’. However, despite various academic and civil society efforts (e.g., an Independent Expert Panel’s report of 2021), there is no clarity on the elements of ecocide, its added value, symbolic potential and performative effects. This project aims to further clarify these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, which enables the project to move beyond the relatively narrow confines of the current discussion dominated by lawyers. 

The project consists of three work packages: 1. Utrecht Knowledge Hub on Ecocide; 2. Mock trials; 3. Policy briefs. The work packages will build on each other, e.g., the Knowledge Hub will integrate and further develop interdisciplinary knowledge on Ecocide that builds the foundation for the mock trials and policy briefs. The mock trials will generate practical insights that can inform the Knowledge Hub and raise awareness for policy debates. 

 

Completed projects

European History Reloaded: Circulation and Appropriation of Digitized European Audiovisual Heritage (2018-2021)

During the past decade, a massive body of audiovisual heritage has become digitally accessible, on websites of archives, through initiatives such as Europeana.eu and EUscreen.eu, and on platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. The proposed project is the first to research the online circulation and appropriation of audiovisual heritage using an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. It combines state of the art tracing and tracking technologies, critical cultural analysis and ethnographic fieldwork to answer the questions: How do strategies of curation shape the appropriation of digitized heritage? What new perspectives on European history and identity do digital curations and appropriations of audiovisual heritage create? How can audiovisual archives better foster the re-use of Europe’s audiovisual heritage? The project’s case studies highlight European History from the Cold War to the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Migration in Europe—both urgent topics within debates about Europe’s past, identity and future.

The project brings together interdisciplinary expertise in the curation of digital audiovisual heritage (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), contemporary European history (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Republic) and Digital Humanities (Umeå University, Sweden). It collaborates with leading stakeholders in the field, such as Europeana.eu—and its main audiovisual aggregator EUscreen.eu—as well as the attached 35 audiovisual archives across Europe. To reach out to users of audiovisual heritage, the project will also co-operate with the European Association of History Educators, Historiana.eu, and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

The project’s outcomes will contribute to a better understanding of popular interpretations of European history circulating online. It will foster critical engagement with audiovisual heritage in a participatory media landscape, including the consequences of digital historiography. Based on outcomes, the project will advise heritage institutions about best practices of user-engaging curation. Outcomes will also provide history educators with accessible material to engage students working online with Europe’s audiovisual heritage.

 

EUscreenXL (2013-2016)

EUscreen XL is a follow up to the The EUscreen project lead by Utrecht University between 2009 and 2012. The EUscreen portal offers free online access to thousands of items of audiovisual heritage. It brings together clips that provide an insight into the social, cultural, political and economic events that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries. As well as chronicling important historical events, the EUscreen portal allows users to explore television programmes that focus on everyday experience. EUscreen is also a resource for educators, researchers and media professionals searching for new audiovisual content from across Europe. EUscreen portal was built by a consortium of European audiovisual archives, public broadcasters, academic and technical partners. It has been funded by the European Commission. The EUscreen project ran from 2009 - 2012 under the FP7 programme.

Its successor, EUscreenXL, laed by Eggo Müller, ran between 2013 and  2016 under the CIP ICT-PSP support programme. It added 20.000 more audivisual heritage items to the EUscreen portal, but more importantly, aggregated digitized audiovisual collections for Europeana, the platform for European heritage offering tens of millions of objects in diverse collections. EUscreen XL has aggregated more than 1.000.000 items for Europeana form all over Europe to facilitate the online use of videos, photos, audio and images in diverse cultural and educatioinal contexts.

 

Chair
Media and Communication
Inaugural lecture date
07.02.2014