Survey of Research Activity

Survey of the current state and probable directions of research activity internationally in cultural research

One of the key international developments in the humanities and social sciences over the last two decades has been the growth of new ways of understanding contemporary culture—particularly the way meanings are generated within popular culture and through the mass media. Initially much of this work was prosecuted through a tradition of textual analysis within cultural and media studies, and then attention turned to ways of understanding how texts are used by their consumers or audiences. The study of film and television, in particular, was a dominant concern for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

More recently, however, cultural and media studies have turned their attention to broader understandings of how people make meanings within the structures of everyday life. This includes consideration of the construction of cultural identity, the use of cultural technologies, and the part played by cultural histories in framing our everyday experience. These concerns have taken cultural and media studies into the territories occupied by disciplines such as history, anthropology and geography. Cultural studies’ interest in such territories has been different, though, to that which was common to the disciplines concerned. As a result, cultural studies has helped to encourage new concerns, methods, and practices within these related disciplines.

Nationally, and internationally, the result has been a broadening interdisciplinary movement around the central concept of culture and focusing upon the production and consumption of everyday life. Initially confined to small theoretical developments within nascent fields such as cultural studies, the broad phenomenon we are describing here has become the major academic movement of the last two decades. It holds enormous potential for interdisciplinary, multi-perspectived approaches to social and cultural research.

Opportunities for the future lie in a greater dialogue between what are effectively two traditions: the more empirical and descriptive traditions underpinning anthropology, history, and geography and the critical and interpretive traditions fundamental to cultural and media studies. That description does not exhaust their disciplinary characters, of course, but it highlights a unique opportunity to cross a crucial divide within the humanities and social sciences in order to develop a much more comprehensive and contingent model of what can be done in the field of cultural research.

There are already many locations where this is being prosecuted through international collaborations, linkages and exchanges.

Currently, network participants are involved in a variety of international collaborations. Following is a select indication of the range of these collaborations.

Projects funded, wholly or partially by international organisations:

"Branding Cities on the West Pacific Rim Project Exhibition" with the Hong Kong Film Archive and a case study on mass access to tertiary education with the Shanghai Television University (Donald)
"Cultural economies in the Asia-Pacific region" for the National University of Singapore (Gibson)
the Transculturalisms Project, directed by Prof. Sneja Gunew for the International Council for Canadian Studies (Probyn)
Trans/cultural Translators: Mediating Race, Indigeneity, Ethnicity in Four Nations. Principal Organizer: E. Ann Kaplan (USA) Rockefeller/Bellagio Centre (Probyn)
the Urban Imaginaries research network, convened by the Kwan Fong Cultural Research and Development Program of Lingnan University, Hong Kong and the HRC, at ANU (Turner)

Projects funded locally with international collaboration:

"Antarctic Spaces: A Comparative Study of Australian and British Cultural Geographies on the Ice" with Royal Holloway, London (Collis);
"Cold Colonies: Spatialities of Antarctica's Built Environment" with the University College of London (Collis).

Active membership on international associations:

the International Association for Mass Communication Research Working Group on Popular Culture; the Association for Research in Popular Fictions (Bonner);
the International Association for Mass Communication Research; and the Association of Internet Researchers (Goggin);
the Taiwan Cultural Studies Association (Martin);
the International Association for Media and Communication Research; and the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (Sinclair).

Membership of collaborative research centres;

the UNSW-UTS Centre for Research on Provincial China (Sun)

Involvement in the organisation of international conferences;

AsiaPacifiQueer: An International Conference of Asian Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Queer Studies (McLelland, Martin);
"Cultural Research in the Indian Ocean" (in 2005), with the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore (Muecke).
"Empire, Media and Political Regimes in Asia" (2004), featuring presenters from the University of Ontario; Goldsmith College, London; Universiti Sains, Malaysia; as well as several Australian universities (Sen)

Visiting or adjunct professorships, or visiting fellowships:

Goldsmith College, University of London (Probyn);
University of Montreal (Probyn);
Albert Schweitzer International University (Probyn);
the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Sinclair);
the University of Texas at Austin (Sinclair);
the University of California, San Diego (Sinclair);
Media and Cultural Studies Centre, University of Sunderland, UK (Turner).

Membership of international advisory panels:

external consultant on the Open University's course "Understanding Media" (Bonner);
International validation panel, Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Journalism and Communications, Chu Hai College, Hong Kong, (Lumby);
member of the editorial board of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, (Tsing Hua University, Taiwan) and (National University of Singapore) (Martin);
external examiner for the Cultural Studies degree program at Lingnan University, Hong Kong (Turner)