Arts, Media and Culture

The Arts, Media, and Culture (AMC) research programme analyses the dynamics of cultural change by studying how developments in the arts and the media respond to socio-cultural and political changes and how, vice versa, cultural artefacts and practices can shape social and political culture. AMC researchers study many different outputs, ranging from novels to installation and performance art, from political essays to public monuments, and from online communities to hacking spaces. What unites these inquiries is a focus on the practices in which cultural artefacts are produced, distributed, and received. This emphasis on situated practices means that we are interested in the social and historical but also in the material and bodily constituents of culture-in-the-making.

Theoretically, AMC scholarship follows new developments in critical theory, ethics, and digital and environmental humanities. AMC research relates to paradigms such as post-humanism and new materialism that may transform the humanities beyond its anthropocentric foundations. In addition, digital developments enable us to explore new forms of data collection, analysis, and presentation as well as new ways of engagement with audiences. The topics that we study and the questions that we ask have a strong social dimension. We are committed to engaged scholarly practices that combine conventional valorization activities (e.g., exhibitions, toolkits, and installations) with innovative co-creative practices that involve societal stakeholders in the development and production of knowledge (see our edited volume Engaged Humanities: Rethinking Art, Culture, and Public Life, forthcoming). Many of our projects have an ethical and normative component and several AMC scholars identify as activist-scholars.

Methodologically, research projects within AMC often combine approaches from the humanities and social sciences, for instance critical discourse analysis, philosophical reflection, and close reading with ethnographic field work including interventions, field observations, and interviews.

News

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  • For his project ‘OPER3D: Open Publishing and Peer Review for 3D Scholarship’, Costas Papadopoulos has received funding from the NWO Open Science Fund.

  • The Belgian adoption system is in need of more transparency. Maastricht University's Centre for Gender and Diversity and the Belgian 'Afstammingscentrum' (research centre of filiation) work together to give a greater voice to adoptees, donor-conceived people and metis of the former Belgian colonies.

  • How can you reinvent the orchestra? The Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM) and philharmonie zuidnederland worked together to appeal to a new audience.