Defense - past and future
Future defense first: Lisbeth's thesis has been accepted for her defense! Congratulations! It will happen June 20th, and I am so very happy for her. I think all the other feelings I am overwhelmed by at the thought of comittees reading doctorate thesises should really not be repeated. If you have heard me whine before, just put that on replay. Or not.

Past defense: Colleague Lars Nyre defended his Doctorate Thesis Fidelity Matters: Sound Media and Realism in the 20th Century. This happened in Bergen Saturday May 31st.

Lars' doctorate has always been one of my babies - although this one has been growing up in a foster home. The funding for his grant was the first time Espen Aarseth and I cooperated. I was aware that a decentralised University grant from Bergen would be open for new applications, and nobody here had done anything about it. I told Espen about that, and he did the lobbying towards the administration at the University in Bergen, while I worked with the college administration. After Espen and I had prepared everything and pretty much had the University acceptance of the grant, we were asked to involve the Institute of Media Science in Bergen, since I am at the Department of Media Studies here in Volda. Now, 6 years later, nobody but Espen and I remember that this doctorate is actually one in Digital Media. That does not diminish Lars' achievement though: he has submitted a very interesting and original work within a field that has been sorely ignored in media studies in Norway.