Sean Ryder, Chair, HERA Network Board, London Briefing Session, London 15th March 2012

1. Opening remarks on theme of
‘Cultural Encounters’
Sean Ryder
Chair, HERA Network Board
London Briefing Session
London 15th March 2012

2. 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

3. 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!

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.