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Opening remarks on theme of ‘Cultural Encounters’. Sean Ryder Chair, HERA Network Board Cultural Encounters ‘matchmaking event’ Berlin 21 February 2012. What is HERA?.
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Opening remarks on theme of ‘Cultural Encounters’ Sean Ryder Chair, HERA Network Board Cultural Encounters ‘matchmaking event’ Berlin 21 February 2012
What is HERA? • A partnership among Humanities research councils across Europe (currently 22 partners, including the European Science Foundation) • New JRP (=Joint Research Programme) on ‘Cultural Encounters’ with 18m+ euro. There are 18 countries participating. • Previous HERA JRP in 2009 on ‘Cultural Dynamics’ and ‘Creativity & Innovation’ funded 19 projects.
Why HERA? Humanities research matters! Culture matters!
Cultural Encounters Understanding ‘cultural encounters’ requires that we: • Think historically • Think spatially • Think about cultural forms: communication, representation, language, literature, art, media, institutions, etc. • Think theoretically
Cultural Encounters focus areas • Call text lists possible themes and questions to be addressed by ‘Cultural Encounters’ projects • Not prescriptive or exhaustive, only a set of suggestions!
Cultural Encounters focus areas a. Cultural encounters over time and space: • Role of CE in social imaginaries / imagined communities • Drivers of CE • Contribution of arts • Cultural transformations • Lessons of CE for shaping societal values • Cultural consequences of globalisation
Cultural Encounters focus areas b. Social and political dimensions of CE: • Historical models of cultural integration – successful and unsuccessful • Dynamics between integration and difference • Influence of policy • Concepts of tolerance and pluralism • Linguistic diversity: effects and policy implications • Identity, belonging, citizenship
Cultural Encounters focus areas c. Translation, interpretation, mediatisation: • Adapting cultural practices as a result of CE • Transformative effects of translation • CE as stimulus to creativity • Music, art, performance, literature as barrier or facilitator • Effects of media, digital and otherwise
Think about: • Collaboration • Collaboration should give a particular added value to questions of culture, identity, creativity, innovation. Addressing familiar questions in new ways impossible for an individual researcher. • Interdisciplinarity • Not a requirement or a doctrine, but an ambition to challenge the familiar and the conventional • Interdisciplinarity rather than simple ‘multi-disciplinarity’. Not just combining the insights of disciplines, but reaching insights which move the boundaries of the disciplines.
Think about: • Internationalisation • A requirement. Like interdisciplinarity, research across national boundaries should have the capacity to unfix the assumptions which form the vision-limits and comfort-zones of specific traditions and identities. • European added value • Why will this multi-national research and partnership make a difference? Why is it something that can’t simply be done with local or national funding? Also: this criterion not about “European” topics, but about the better research made possible though collaboration among researchers based in Europe.
Think about: • Transferring/exchanging the knowledge • How can your research process and/or results be linked and disseminated to wider world outside the academy? Possibility for mutually-enriching collaboration with non-academic partners.