Mission Statement

The field is not defined by a particular type, medium, or genre of objects. Cultural analysis investigates contemporary socio-cultural objects, phenomena, and developments from a broadly hermeneutic, critical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary perspective.

The NICA research environment is characterized by diversity in theoretical approaches and research traditions, as well as its affinity with artistic research. The field cuts across different disciplines, such as Comparative Literature, Media Studies, Art History, Theatre and Performance Studies, Gender Studies, Environmental Humanities, Urban Studies, Philosophy, Sociology.

The goals of NICA are:

• to facilitate a national graduate environment, in which staff researchers, PhD candidates, and research master students meet and interact. As a national school, we strive to introduce our members to an expansive and international intellectual community, open up research perspectives beyond local priorities, and advance the sharing of resources and expertise. Following this aim, we generally do not observe rigid boundaries between activities for PhD fellows and research master students, although different emphases can apply;
• to organise activities that map and analyse (resonances of the past in) the present (i.e. cultural memory, cultural heritage). We want our activities to reflect current research priorities, and want to propose new tools and concepts that can gain critical purchase on contemporary circumstances;
• to foster international dialogue through our participation in research networks and consortia, such as the European Summer School for Cultural Studies (ESSCS), the School for Materialist Research (SMR), the Platform for Postcolonial Readings (PPR);
• to open up to social and political partners outside the academy. We want to enable intensified contact between academics and various parties working outside the university: professionals, intellectuals, curators, organisers, activists, artists, journalists, writers, and so on;
• to cultivate a non-hierarchical and bottom-up organizational structure, hospitable and open to varied initiatives. We prefer informal dialogue over protocols and procedures. PhD researchers, in particular, should be seen as active partners in the practice of research rather than the didactic recipients of established expertise and skill. Both PhD researchers and research master students are encouraged to initiate activities on their own. In general, we try to make no unwarranted distinctions between members and non-members, funded and non-funded PhD researchers. In principle, our activities are open to all.

NICA’s research profile may be described as hermeneutic (in its broadest sense); interdisciplinary; theoretical; and contemporary.

1. hermeneutic in the broadest sense, that is, centered on the description, analysis, interpretation of, and reflection on, diverse cultural phenomena;
2. interdisciplinary, since current and ongoing cultural developments resist enclosure within established disciplines. Of course, the expertise and archives of more traditional humanities disciplines remain indispensable in these research endeavors;
3. theoretical, in that it opens up the study of culture to conceptual and philosophical questions;
4. and focused on contemporary culture—including the ways in which cultures shape a relation to the past, an approach that commonly goes under the heading of “cultural memory.”