Cultural Research at LiU

For today's researchers culture is not just music, theatre and literature but it also refers to the way people live and view the world. As early as 1967 the British sociologist Raymond Williams defined culture as "a whole way of life". During the 1970s this extended concept of culture had a great impact in the British Cultural Studies school which found its way beyond high culture and founded a scientific perspective on youth and popular culture.

Since then, cultural studies has developed from a school education to a multidisciplinary international research field that is not only interested in popular culture and media studies, but also addresses issues on the relationship between culture and economics, politics, technology, ethnicity, gender, daily life and much more.

Cultural studies is about viewing social phenomena as cultural expressions and today's culture researchers can therefore study almost anything, as long as they construct a cultural science perspective. A perspective which in recent years has gained in importance, both within and outside the academic environment. As culture has become an increasingly important source of social and economic development, there is an increasing need for skilled cultural research that can provide new and deeper knowledge of the importance of various cultural patterns and forms of expression for society.

Since cultural studies can include all aspects of everyday, social and business life it is not only found in the humanities traditional core subjects but also in the social sciences, economics and other disciplines. Linköping University's interdisciplinary tradition creates good conditions to develop such research perspectives and some of Sweden's strongest cultural research environments can today be found at Linköping University.

Current projects

• Tema Kultur och samhälle
• The Research Environment for Cultural Sciences
• The Graduate School in Language and Culture in Europe
• Tema Gender
• ACSIS
• Swedish Cultural Policy Research Observatory