Werner Kelber to be awarded 2019 Walter J. Ong Award

by the Media Ecology Association

June 27-30, 2019 at the University of Toronto

The Media Ecology Association (MEA) will award Werner Kelber the Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship at their annual convention, June 27-30, 2019 at the University of Toronto.

The MEA awards committee chose Dr. Kelber because of his exemplary record of scholarship and innovation in works such as The Oral and the Written Gospel, Jesus in Memory-Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives, all of which were cited by awards committee members as seminal and ground breaking works that span the bridges between information studies, media studies, globalization and new media.

Previous recipients of the Walter J. Ong award and keynote speakers have included Sherry Turkle, John Miles Foley, James Carey, Elizabeth Eisenstein and Denise Schmandt-Besserat.

The Media Ecology Association (MEA) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the study, research, criticism, and application of media ecology in educational, industry, political, civic, social, cultural, and artistic contexts, and the open exchange of ideas, information, and research among the Association’s members. As past president and founding member Lance Strate has written, “Media Ecology is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs.” The organization was founded in 1998 and was inspired by the works of Neil Postman, Walter Ong, Harold Innis, Elizabeth Eisenstein and others.