Centres and Institutes
The Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies (CEACS) was founded in 2012. The Centre facilitates innovative research into and critical debate on cultural thinking and practices related to China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea as well as associated diasporic communities around the world. The Centre also collaborates with major cultural institutions, creative industries and cultural practitioners to support the critical dissemination of knowledge about East Asian cultures within an international context.
CEACS is an international platform for research that draws on established expertise at the University of Nottingham’s campuses in China and Malaysia as well as in the UK. As such, it provides a unique focus for interdisciplinary research networking, international mobility, knowledge transfer and public impact involving scholars, research students and practitioners engaged in the study of East Asian cultures both within East Asia and beyond. While the Centre embraces the contemporary critical turn within the humanities, it also seeks to engage critically with differing cultural perspectives associated with traditional and contemporary East Asian cultures.
The Centre’s programme of events includes conferences held at the University of Nottingham’s China, Malaysia and UK campuses and an annual research seminar series at the University of Nottingham UK. These events provide an international forum for scholars and practitioners working in areas related to literature, film, the visual arts, music, performance, television and the media to come together and engage in critical discussion on subjects germane to East Asian cultural studies.
CEACS has established links to academic and non-academic publishers working in the field of East Asian cultural studies as well as public and private institutions involved in the displaying and collecting of East-Asian cultural artifacts, texts and performances. The Centre is currently working towards the establishing of a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to East Asian cultural studies.
If you wish to participate in the activities of the centre, or require further information, please contact the current head of the Centre, Dr. Paul Gladston at paul.gladston@nottingham.ac.uk. The Centre extends membership to established and early career researchers, post-graduate researchers, cultural practitioners and cultural institutions. The Centre also welcomes offers of funding to support its activities from interested individuals and institutions.
Building on over twenty years of excellence in the field of critical theory at the University of Nottingham, the Centre for Critical Theory (CCT) facilitates and promotes cutting-edge research that aims to maintain critical theory’s relevance for contemporary society, politics and culture.
As well as organising visiting speaker series, annual lectures, workshops and international conferences, the Centre draws on expertise spanning seven schools across three Faculties to deliver six MA programmes in critical theory and cultural studies: these MAs are in Critical Theory, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies, Critical Theory and Politics, Critical Theory and Architecture, and Cultural Studies. The Centre also provides an intellectual hub for a large doctoral community working on PhD projects related to contemporary applications of critical theory, often facilitating student-led postgraduate events.
The Centre broadly conceives of critical theory as arising from the intersections of three traditions in the humanities and social sciences. Firstly, the tradition of continental philosophy that incorporates German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, and poststructuralism, as well as the method of immanent critique developed by the Frankfurt School with its emphasis on the writings of Marx and Freud. Secondly, the tradition of literary criticism and theory that provides tools for the analysis of ‘texts’ in both the narrow and expansive sense. Thirdly, the field of anthropology that examines the diversity of cultural practices and sense-making rituals which structure everyday life. However, the Centre is committed to bringing these overlapping traditions in the humanities and social sciences to life through a theoretically informed engagement with the present, including emergent new technologies, shifts in forms of capitalism, resistant social movements, and creative forms of activism.
The Institute for Screen Industries Research provides support for research to promote long-term sustainability and efficiency in the film, television and video game industries. To this end, the Institute is engaged in close collaboration with industry at all levels, from major studios to young filmmakers.
ISIR brings together leading practitioners and scholars to work together on current challenges and opportunities facing the screen industries by developing innovative solutions and production opportunities.
It is the aim of ISIR to become a catalyst for industry development through transforming the City of Nottingham into a uniquely resourced ideas incubator for the industry and an engine for research and enterprise. ISIR brings together staff from different academic fields (arts, business, computer science and beyond) with a shared research interest and expertise in the screen industries, providing an effective and supportive platform from which to launch cutting-edge innovative research projects in consultation and collaboration with industry.
Through partnerships with major industry players and studios in China, Europe, New Zealand and the United States, and with public bodies (e.g. the British Film Institute), ISIR is engaged with various activities that share an industry-aware approach to research. Rejecting historical distinctions between theory and practice, researchers working through ISIR embrace a third-way approach where both theory and practice are informed centrally by industrial dynamics, dialogue with studios and filmmakers, and framed accordingly within a truly global perspective.