On 12 January 2023, UNIMED, as part of the PAgES project, held a 60 minutes closing webinar on “Cross-media Journalism education in Libya: looking back and looking forward”, focusing on good practices from the project. The panel featured a diverse range of experts and practitioners working in the media, journalism, and higher education from the project consortium, from both European and Libyan partners.
The webinar started with Andrea Miconi, IULM University, the coordinator of the project, looking back to the 4 years of the project history, tributing the success of the project despite the difficulties it witnessed, especially during the pandemic, thanking all the partners for their hard work.
Andrea briefly talked about Journalism: A Cross-Media Approach to Media Education: Lessons learned, mentioning some remaining key points in the project to finalise, and concluding that more work will be done in terms of networking and new possibilities for upcoming projects.
“As to journalism, all are usually in a critical situation, such as the post-war situation. When there is a political institutional change, the role of communication and journalism is even more relevant than it is in common situations” Andrea said.
Moving to academic perspectives in media and journalism, Pedro Almeida, University of Aveiro, talked about ‘New bridges between the media industry and the academy’. He shared good practices from the Portuguese Media company and the master, and the collection between industry and the Academy, aiming to inspire the Libyan universities with their master course.
While Alan Hewitt, University of Granada, gave an in-depth presentation about ‘English for journalism students and academics: Open-access resources’, highlighting that a number of target groups would benefit significantly from English for journalism, incorporating resources in the curriculum, and how useful this is for students interested in studying or working abroad, or for academics who have to communicate research or teach in English on it on a daily basis, and also journalists who are disseminating international news in Libya or translating living news into English.
The second part of the webinar focused on the perspectives of the Libyan partners, where Khaled Gulam, University of Tripoli, Ali M. Abdulshahed, Misurata University, and Ali M. Tarmal, Zawia University, along with students and other representatives from the different universities, shared updates about the process of master course in Cross-media journalism within each university, gave presentations about key challenges and opportunities for cross-media journalism education in Libya, and future collaborations.
The session concluded by sharing thoughts and vision for the “Cross-media Journalism education in Libya: looking back and looking forward”.



