PI: Susana Tosca, Professor at SDU
Susana Tosca is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. Over the last twenty years, her research has combined aesthetic and media studies approaches to investigating the reception of digital media. She has published widely on the areas of hypertext, digital literature, computer games, transmediality and Japanese popular culture media. She is the author of the books Sameness and Repetition in Contemporary Media Culture, Transmedial Worlds in Everyday Life, Understanding Videogames and Literatura Digital. Apart from POP-IMAGINE, she is currently PI of the projects DiEM – Digital Entertainment Machine (funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF)), and Transmedial Travel Imaginaries in Japan and Danmark (funded by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science).
Susana read so much fantasy, science fiction and manga as a child that her parents were worried her brain would shrivel up like Don Quixotes, so they established daily book-free hours where she had to go and play outside, yikes. As a young student, she spent many hours playing, designing and running roleplaying games, and saved up for years to have an Akira red leather jacket custommade. Unfortunately, she had no talent for drawing so she became an academic instead.
Susana is leading SP3 in which she explores the media products across genres, platforms and cultures that constitute the popular culture imaginaries relevant for the two exhibitions.
Nanna Holdgaard, Senior Researcher at NM
Nanna Holdgaard is a senior researcher at the National Museum, specializing in the intersection of museum communication, audience Nanna Holdgaard is a senior researcher at the National Museum, specializing in the intersection of museum communication, audience studies, and design. Her current research encompasses play in museums, children and young people’s museum experiences, and museum co-design partnerships and processes.
One of Nanna’s fondest reading memories is Lars-Henrik Olsen's novel Erik and the Gods: Journey to Valhalla (Erik Menneskesøn in Danish), and she has read the same novel to both of her sons.
Martin Petersen, Senior Researcher at NM
Martin Petersen is senior researcher and curator of the East Asian collections at the National Museum of Denmark. His research focuses on East Asian popular culture and ethnographic museums. He currently leads the research project “Nye Østasiatiske Museumsfortællinger” (New East Asian Museum Tales) (2024-2026). Recently, he has published on East Asian popular culture in a Danish perspective, North Korean comics, Danish ethnographic expeditions and the Korean collection in the National Museum of Denmark. As museum curator he works on exhibitions, events, podcasts, collection catalogues and more. He is also comic book writer.
Christian Hviid Mortensen, Postdoc at SDU
Christian’s research interest is at the intersection between media, culture, heritage and memory. Christian has extensive experience from the museum sector as a curator at The Media Museum in Odense (2007-2018) and strives to combine theoretical and practice perspectives with empirical investigations in mutually illuminating ways. Christian has researched futuristic media imaginaries and is currently exploring the futuristic imaginary of cultural heritage in the comic book Transmetropolitan. Previously Christian has been Assistant Professor of Media Studies at SDU (2020-2024) and part of the Horizon 2020 research project GIFT on Hybrid Museum Experiences at ITU (2018-2020). Since 2015 Christian has been Editor and Journal Manager of MedieKultur - Journal of Media and communication research.
Christian was part of the first wave of Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying in the 1980s and rediscovered the joys of the fantasy genre with the Game of Thrones books and early seasons of the TV-series. Christian enjoys genre-bending comic books such as Astro City and the violent anti-superhero narrative of The Boys as well as introducing his daughters to the oeuvre of Studio Ghibli. Another recent rediscovery of teenage indulgences is the sounds and visual culture of the heave metal subculture and Christian again enjoys watching new upcoming bands, as well as the old dinosaurs, live on stage and buying new band t-shirts as all the old ones has vanished during numerous household relocations.
Christian is leading SP1 exploring the museum side of the dynamic between museum, heritage, media producers and audience.
Ea Christina Valentin Willumsen, Postdoc at SDU
Ea is a multidisciplinary postdoctoral researcher at SDU with a special interest in methodology. She has a background in audience research at DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, where she has explored media use in everyday life as well as user needs and motivation using a great variety of methods, from mobile ethnography and in-depth interviews to UX tests and big data analysis. Before she became interested in users, audiences and visitors, she developed theory for the study of digital games and holds a Ph.D. in Media Studies.
When Ea was a child, she begged her mother to go to the local Games Workshop (Warhammer store), but her mother wouldn’t allow it, worried that Ea would become a nerd. Little did her mother know that long weekends with her PlayStation 1 and a room crowded with stacks of fantasy books ensured the glorious nerd-mutation of Ea’s DNA. Nowadays, Ea enjoys doing ‘deep dives’ into themes across media. She has recently been knee-deep in Greek mythology in modern literature’s retellings like Madeline Miller’s Circe, questionable-quality B-movies such as Clash of the Titans and the video game Hades. And she is now the proud owner of a small collection of hand-painted Warhammer figurines.
Ea is leading SP2 where popular culture imaginaries are explored in relation to visitors’ reception of the two museum exhibitions.
Advisory Board
The advisory board of POP-IMAGINE consists of two top-researchers from Scandinavian universities along with two senior research specialists from the National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet). These experts follow the project, provide continuous feedback, and engage with the project through annual meetings.