About the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture

Since our establishment in 1991, we have developed into the largest research centre of our kind in the UK, and the QS World University Rankings have consistently placed us in the top 100 globally for communications and media research.

We are a proudly interdisciplinary centre, creatively combining social science and humanities approaches for the rigorous exploration of the production and consumption of different forms of communication and creative texts. Our research draws on and contributes to theories and methods in cultural and media studies, sociology, politics, psychology, history and memory studies, textual, visual and computational analysis, and geography.

We are interested in exploring how media and cultural texts are produced, how they construct meanings, how they shape the societies we live in, and how they fit within an ever-growing creative economy. To achieve these goals, we work closely with the department of Communication and Media within the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.

One of the things that makes us most proud of the research our members produce is its breadth and its disciplinary and methodological richness: our interests span longstanding forms of communications such as poetry, novels and journalism, to everyday personal interactions in face-to-face and online settings, to the newest developments in social media and creative industries practice. Our understanding of ‘communication’ includes news and election campaigns but also encompasses interpersonal and small-group communication and interaction, creative forms of expression ranging from contemporary art to popular music, and the ways in which museums communicate the past.

Our work in our core research themes is regarded as world-leading, and we are committed to scholarship that engages with the world and makes a mark on it. We use a diversity of methods for data gathering and analysis and collaborative work has always played a central role in what we do. Collaborators we have worked with include the BBC, the Scotland Police, The European Federation of Journalists, the European Broadcasting Union, the Electoral Commission, The Science Museum Group, The Wende Museum, and software company Typeform. Together with our international collaborators, these partners help us deliver innovative research of exceptional quality that helps make a difference.

We are committed to disseminating our work widely, and do so in a variety of ways that include but go well beyond the boundaries of traditional academic publishing: we give TED talks and provide commentary in the press, we contribute to TV documentaries and news broadcasts, we use social media to engage in public discussions, we communicate our findings through museum exhibitions, and generally engage non-specialist audiences and research users.

We hope you enjoy finding out more about our current research and collaborations. ‌

Professor James Stanyer
Director, Centre for Research in Communication and Culture