Context of the Report

The scope, aims and structure of the proposed network and the research portfolio associated with it

Scope

The network will reach from cultural, media, communications studies and what is often known as ‘the new humanities’ into other humanities (and, increasingly, social sciences) disciplines that focus upon the production and consumption of culture as their key research object. Cultural history, cultural geography and cultural anthropology are the primary disciplines in this regard. In addition, the network will apply the resources available from this range of disciplinary perspectives to the examination of contemporary cultural technologies, their use and significance. As a result, the network will also devote its attention to the examination of new media, cultural and regulatory policy environments, and the development of creative industries.

Framing the network in this way responds to the rise of cultural studies in particular as a research discipline; to the increasingly collaborative and intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of this work; and the opportunity provided for a genuinely interdisciplinary network by the centrality of culture to so many disciplines among the humanities and social sciences.

Network Aims

To enhance interdisciplinary exchange between researchers from cultural studies, media studies, and communications studies with emerging trends in cultural geography, cultural history, cultural anthropology, new media, cultural policy studies, and creative industries.
To apply the benefits of such exchanges to developing multidisciplinary approaches to research on cultural histories, cultural literacies, cultural technologies and cultural identities.
To establish networks of communication to maximise the influence, capacity and collaborative potential of innovative cultural research in Australia.
Over the five years of the funding period, to develop a coherent program of collaborative cultural research projects for which ARC program funding can be sought.

Structure

The network will have a central management committee to coordinate its activities, and will employ a part-time convenor and a full-time administrator this end. The network will also be decentralised: it will have separate nodes thematically focused upon cultural histories and geographies, cultural identities, cultural literacies, and cultural technologies. A fifth node will be devoted to the professional development of cultural researchers with a particular focus upon early career and postgraduate researchers. Each node will have a designated convenor, a steering committee, and an annual budget for its activities. They will be reviewed in terms of activities and outcomes annually.

Research portfolio

The research portfolio of this network will be organised around four themes:

Cultural literacies: This involves understanding the processes through which people make sense of culture through the specific means and media available to them. It is now a commonplace to argue that we need more than the traditional forms of literacy: reading and writing. We now need visual literacy and computer literacy, and the competence to deal with the increasing number of systems which deliver cultural content to us everyday: the internet, computer games, mobile telephones and so on. The understanding of these processes is a multidisciplinary project that will involve at least the disciplines nominated in this proposal.
Cultural technologies: To develop a full account of the cultural literacies required today one must first have an understanding of the technologies involved. Where once we might have thought of technology as largely devoted to the advancement of industry or science, today technology is increasingly in the service of the knowledge economy and the production of culture. The role of ICT within domestic and business space, the new convergent environment for telecommunications, the generational differences in technology use within popular culture, are among the issues implicated here. The new notion of ‘creative industries’ addresses itself to (among other things) understanding this shift, and approaches developed within that paradigm will be fundamentally important to the mix of disciplinary perspectives required.
Cultural identities and communities: Among the shifts in our understanding of the function of the media and of cultural technologies generally, is that we have begun to focus more upon their participation in the construction of cultural identity. Further, where once the examination of cultural identity tended to have a nationalist focus—looking at the formation of national identities—more recent work has examined the construction of subcultural, community, regional, and local identities with as much interest as the national. The ways in which particular ethnicities negotiate their connection to national identities, to notions of belonging, has been a focus for researchers in Europe and Australia in recent years, and how popular cultural forms participate in such processes has become a major focus of cultural and media studies.
Cultural histories and cultural geographies: Cultural studies has been marked by its contemporary focus—dealing with the cultural forms of the present. Its approaches have been applied to more than these, however. The trade between cultural history and cultural geography in particular, as a means of dealing with the perspectives of time, place and space required to properly understand cultural processes, has been assisted by concepts developed within cultural studies. As a result of such exchange, in turn, contemporary cultural research now routinely locates and historicises its objects—placing them at a specific time and place as one of the means of understanding them.

An examination of the research interests and recent research grants held by participants in the network will demonstrate that their work is firmly related to such themes.

Click here for a list of Network participants' ARC grants 1996 - 2003

Click here for a list of participants' nominated research interests