About us

Aims

The Centre for Participatory Culture is dedicated to the study of forms of participation, engagement, reception and content creation among non-professionals, users and audiences. It explores practices, motivations and content of participation and the premises and consequences of participatory engagement.

The Centre therefore aims to advance our understanding of:

• The role of media and media technologies in facilitating and shaping practices of participation
• Definitions of participatory culture and participatory practices and expanding the phenomena and spheres shaped by participatory practices
• Cultures and identities associated with participation, social media use and enthusiasm such fans, fandom and activism across the spectrum of popular culture, media and arts, politics and beyond
• The development and history of cultures and practices of participation
• The textual forms associated with and allowing for participation
• The cultural, social, economic, aesthetic and political value of participation, including the interplay between participation and social change
• The interplay between non-professionals and industries, institutions, and organisations
• The structures, agencies and limitations of participatory culture
• The role of participation in citizenship, identity and community in the digital age
• The history and development of participatory practices.

In doing so, the centre will actively engage with non-academic user groups including users, enthusiasts, fans, commentators and citizen journalists as well as media and creative industries.

The centre also supports participatory culture scholarship through the following objectives:

Infrastructure and collaboration

• Support emerging scholarship and facilitate the dissemination of research in the centre through means of academic publication as well as alternative digital distribution
• Generate income through funded collaborative research including RCUK, EU, and commercially funded projects
• Attract internationally leading researchers on participatory culture and related phenomena to the University
• Facilitate interdisciplinary research on forms of participation across the University of Huddersfield
• Build firm international links with leading institutions in the field and establish staff exchange schemes as well, where feasible, visiting fellowships
• Facilitate research impact and its documentation
• Become a national and international focal point for the postgraduate study of participatory culture and fans.
• Inform and strengthen teaching across all degree levels in Media and Journalism and equip all our graduates with a deep understanding of participatory culture and its impact on forms of cultural production and consumption

Theories, Concepts and Methods

• Develop innovative, rigorous theoretical approaches, concepts, models and typologies for the study of participatory culture;
• Innovate, assess and develop methodological approaches to the empirically-grounded study of participatory culture, including digital and non-digital methods
• Analyse and document the impact of role of participatory practices on media industries, regimes of production and journalistic practices
• Facilitate world-leading and internationally excellent outputs.