Cultural and Media Policy Studies News and Events

We are delighted to announce that Professor Jeremy Ahearne will be taking up the directorship of the Centre from September 2014. He will be taking over from Dr Chris Bilton, who has led the Centre for the past six years, overseeing a period of significant expansion. Chris is now standing down so that he can focus more on his teaching and research activities.

Jeremy will be joining us from the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Warwick, where he has published widely on French cultural and intellectual history. Jeremy has also been a member of the Centre since 1996. He has taught modules for us on French and German cultural policy, and also, more recently, on implicit and explicit cultural policies across the world. He has played a defining role in several research projects developed in the Centre (notably, with Oliver Bennett, those on intellectuals and cultural policy, and on religion and cultural policy). His most recent book is Intellectuals, Culture and Public Policy in France: Approaches from the Left (2010), and he is currently completing a book on relations between government and culture in France from 2002 to 2012. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Cultural Policy and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research.

Jeremy is looking forward to playing a full part in the Centre's teaching and research activities, and will be teaching among other things the core module on global cultural policy for the Centre's new MA, run by Jonathan Vickery, on Arts Enterprise and Development.

Further information on Jeremy's research and publications can be found here.

The ESRC funded project Sustainable Flood Memory and follow on Environment Agency project on using digital storytelling for flood resilience have both featured as impact case studies this week on the ESRC's website. Both projects involve the Centre for Cultural Policy Study's Dr Joanne Garde-Hansen, who has worked with Prof Lindsey McEwen (UWE) and Dr Owain Jones (CCRI) for the last three years on exploring local flood knowledge as a form of cultural and collection memory that can be shared socially and through media. To read the ESRC's article 'Sharing Flood Knowledge' click Flood.

Yesterday, 23^rd January saw the Warwick Commission on the Future of Cultural Value meet for its first working day exploring how we invest in our cultural life. High profile Commissioners drawn from the arts, business and academia are working together with their Chair, Vicky Heywood (Chair of the RSA) and Warwick academics to develop new thinking around cultural value, and to start a national conversation of the role of the arts and culture in contemporary society, and the ways in which the richness and diversity of the cultural ecosystem can be preserved and nurtured in difficult economic times.

The Centre is proud to be heavily involved in this exciting and bold new project, which is led by Dr Eleonora Belfiore, together with Prof. Jonothan Neelands of Warwick Business School. Dr Chris Bilton, Centre Director and Prof. Oliver Bennett, founder of the Centre are members of the Commission’s internal academic reference group, which supports the Commission with specialist expertise.