The Lisbon Consortium is a partnership between the Master’s and Doctoral Degree Programs in Culture Studies at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa – School of Human Sciences and prestigious institutions in Lisbon.

The aim of this network is to promote the advanced training in the multidisciplinary field of Culture Studies as well as the professional integration of students. This collaborative network brings together theory, applied research, cultural programming and management.

The Lisbon Consortium is structured in accordance with four fundamental principles:

  • Inter-institutional cooperation;
  • excellence in research;
  • creativity and cultural entrepreneurship;
  • social responsibility in the production of knowledge.

The Lisbon Consortium is a unique and innovative cooperation program with an international focus.

Activities

  • Coordination of academic activities with partner cultural institutions in Lisbon, granting due accreditation.
  • Organisation of thematic seminars/workshops in conjunction with partner institutions.
  • Development of research projects with the objective of studying and promoting the partners’ cultural and heritage assets.
  • Professional integration by means of internships in the partner institutions. Career Development Program.
  • Annual organisation of the Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture (June/July), with the participation of national and international academics, artists and curators.
  • Doctoral double degrees with international academic partners (Justus-Liebig University Giessen, University of Copenhagen and PUC-Rio, Brazil)

Background: What is Culture Studies?

Culture Studies have come of age over the last two decades. Within the framework of the crisis in the humanities and the growing call for renewed arts-based forms of knowledge production, the study of culture has changed from being a frame for humanities’ disciplines into gaining prominence in its own right. Two developments triggered this change. On the one hand, the rise of cultural studies in the 1960’s drew attention to the social-political dimension of culture, to its ordinariness and the many ways in which power was blended into creation. On the other, over the course of the 1980’s a new metadiscipline Kulturwissenschaft (science of culture) drew on the interpretative skills of the humanities and the growing attention to forms of mediation in media studies to look at the multiple ways in which culture matters as driver of artistic creation and also address how societies represent themselves and view others, look at the past and prepare the future. Bringing together the sociological methodology that is proper to British cultural studies with the interpretative qualitative approach of Kulturwissenschaft, Culture Studies is by definition transdisciplinary. It has risen to become a problem-oriented metadiscipline, representing a new paradigm of integrated reflection on the artistic forms of expression of individuals and societies, across the visual arts, literature, cinema and the media.