The UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policies for the Arts and Transformation is headed by Prof. Dr. Julius Heinicke. In its teaching and research activities, the UNESCO Chair team deals with cultural policy issues and challenges of increasingly diverse societies, linking thematic fields of foreign and domestic cultural policy. For this reason, we are focusing our research on the following key topics:
- Analysing the potential of art and culture to implement and reflect on issues of transformation, diversity, sustainability, anti-discrimination and social justice at global and local levels (global-local transformation)
- Discussing and developing regional, national, European and international strategies to implement the “right to art and culture” socially and politically and to shape it democratically (right to art and culture)
- Conducting research into marginalized spaces and groups in order to generate different forms of knowledge for cultural policy decisions (marginalised spaces, groups and knowledge cultures)
- Investigating the importance of and the need for integrating artistic creation into educational and social institutions and school curricula (art as education, culture and arts education)
- Scientific monitoring of the cultural-political linking of arts institutions with social and socially relevant spaces and strategies (third spaces)
We not only conduct research into these areas, but we also integrate them into our study programmes and collaborations. We always develop our research and teaching programmes through dialogue with regional, national and international players and work closely with cultural, artistic and cultural policy organisations, associations and institutions. Although we see ourselves as an independent institution whose freedom in research and teaching is enshrined in the German Basic Law, dialogue and networking with these stakeholders is a priority for us.
