The Research Environment for Cultural Sciences

After the fusion of the research environment Identity and pluralism with History of Art and Visual Communication in 2010 the Research Environment for Cultural Sciences was established. The Research Environment for Cultural Sciences is the research superstructure for the four academic disciplines Social Anthropology, Religious Science, Philosophy and Art History and Visual Communication within the Section for Cultural Sciences (KVA).

Researchers from the four disciplines work within each discipline and also interdisciplinary, including joint courses for post graduate students, joint seminars and research projects. The four disciplines within the research environment have different theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches to the research problems that are connected to the study of humans as cultural and social beings.

Projects carried out by researchers at the research environment include the introduction and reception of modernism in Sweden, moral responsibility, identity making processes among the first Christian groups, philosophical theories of justice, the Swedish experimental art of the 1960's, political leadership in Tamil Nadu, India, religious rituals in modern society, traditional knowledge and indigenous peoples’ political engagement, reworking tradition as a practical and theoretical problem, digital creators¿ evaluation processes, religion and politics in the contemporary U.S.A., love and HIV in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, ideological and theological hermeneutics in the Dead Sea scrolls, and art and architecture in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Research Environment for Cultural Sciences represents the following academic disciplines:

• Social Anthropology is interested in humans as social and cultural beings and anthropologists study people's world views, rituals and ways of life and analyse concepts and ideas that explain human behaviour in complex relations between individuals, society and material conditions.
   
• The area of Religious and Theological Studies is divided into five subject categories: history of religion, religious psychology and sociology, exegetics, the history of Christianity and Christian ethics and philosophy of religion.
   
• Philosophy includes the analysis of the concepts, methods and theory constructions used by human beings to understand and relate to the physical world around them and the social world, the society, to which they belong.
   
• Art History and Visual Communication studies artefacts produced by human beings as part of conscious processes of visual representation. The main task for the art historian is to expalin why these artefacts have been produced, why they are represented in that particular way, what function they have and how they are perceived in their historical and social context.  

Page responsible: gunilla.christiansen@liu.se
Last updated: Mon Jan 21 15:42:28 CET 2013