Research updates
What is the purpose of museums and cultural participation?
Earlier this month, The Guardian published an article about a new study which examined the impact of museum visits on GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) results in the UK. This research joins previous scholarship which explored cultural capital and its relations to sociodemographic differences (Katz-Gerro and Meier Jaeger,2015; Yaish, Katz-Gerro, 2012). According to the new study, museum outings had
New research alert: Upcoming article on personalization and authority in European cultural journalism
Is cultural journalism becoming more personalized and subjective? One of the key debates of contemporary cultural sociology concerns the alleged fragmentation of cultural authority. In an era of crisis of legacy media and normative authorities and, at the same time, strong individualization, who decides what can be defined as valuable culture? Quality journalism covering culture is a good place to
Symbolic conflicts in Serbia: Novak Đoković and the Australian Open
The contemporary Serbian society is deeply divided over the question of what and what kind of culture can and should have the status of legitimate – “valuable”, “true”, and “morally correct”. Conflicts over the “right” worldview have taken the form of Culture wars. The multitude of “Serbian divisions”, with the inevitable simplifications, summaries and generalizations, can be reduced to the
How do Europeans feel about culture two years into a pandemic?
In February 2020, the INVENT project commenced having planned out the multiple interdisciplinary research queries set to be conducted over the course of the project. Not long after, the Covid-19 pandemic introduced itself as an unforeseen factor and formidable force that has gone on to interlace itself throughout nearly every stage of the project thus far. What Covid has brought
New Research: A collaboration between UK and Spain team members analyzes the participation of Women in Gaming
Throughout the years, video games have been considered a masculine interest. However, through INVENT, the UK survey found no gender differences in responses to the question regarding the belonging of video games to the definition of “culture” (10% of men and 10% women replied “yes” to this question). In a new collaboration between Neta Yodovich (from our UK team) and
Cultural Microcosms in Europe
Unlike the simple divisions into elite and mass arts audiences, omnivores and univores, the culturally engaged and cultural inactives – while analysing INVENT survey data – we encountered a large number of small cultural worlds or cultural microcosms. Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis, we identified a number of aggregates of people who have different conceptions of culture,
Upcoming article on the relationship between cultural participation and political orientation
Finnish INVENT Team members Sara Sivonen and Semi Purhonen will be publishing an article called “Politics and cultural participation: The associations of party preference and conservativeness with high and popular cultural participation in Finland” in Sosiologia later this autumn (article in Finnish). The article examines the association between politics and cultural participation in contemporary Finland from the perspective of change
Tourism and the Social Values of Culture
Croatian INVENT team co-leader Mirko Petrić participated in the online panel on sustainable cultural tourism, held on the occasion of the World Tourism Day, and organized by the Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism in Split (Croatia) on October 21st, 2021. His presentation emphasized the importance of the societal values of culture, from a perspective developed within the INVENT project.
New research alert: Diversity in cultural leadership
Aligning with INVENT’s interests in globalization, unequal cultural opportunities, and a bottom-up approach to cultural policy, Yeala Hazut Yanuka, from the UK team, is finalizing her research on diversity in cultural leadership in Arts Council England (ACE) and how it is perceived in the media. Her research explores ACE’s view and the media’s view of the leadership component in ACE’s diversity strategy in the framework of organizational legitimacy theory (Suchman 1995). The study
New INVENT team member: Dr. Eva Myrczik joins the Danish team as a postdoctoral researcher
The INVENT-team is happy to welcome Dr. Eva Myrczik as a postdoctoral researcher in the Danish team as of October 15, 2021. Eva Myrczik has a MA in Cognition and Communication from the University of Copenhagen and achieved her PhD in November 2019 from the same university with the dissertation Digital Museum Mediation in Denmark: A Critical Exploration of the
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870691