Call for Papers: Culture, Communication and Creativity

International Conference at the Technical University of Berlin
Technische Universität / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin 5.-8.9.2012


In cooperation with the European Sociological Association Research Network “Sociology of Culture” and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin we are organizing a conference on Culture, Communication and Creativity in Berlin, from 5-8 September 2012. The aims of the conference will be

(1) to encourage reflection on general theoretical and cultural aspects of (empirical studies of) creativity,
(2) to discuss general recent theories of culture from different cultural backgrounds in the face of empirical studies of creativity and culture. Finally, the conference aims
(3) at relating both these issues to the changing role of communication, which is rarely respected within the study of culture and creativity.

Given the far reaching transformation of communication and culture by the new information technologies in the last decades, it is rather surprising that the transformation of the structure of communication has not been taken more into consideration as one of the most decisive aspects of the new “productivity” of culture. This does not refer to the role of media and particularly “mass media culture”. Both have been studied to an extensive degree. The focus here lies on the ways in which communication is transformed by (but not only) the new media (which has been called, among others, mediatization) and created what may be called a new “communication culture”. Communication shall, therefore, function as a link between the notion of culture and creativity.

The conference will attempt to relate the three notions. While culture, cultural theory and the sociology of culture (or cultural sociology) provide for the general frame of the conference, studies on creativity will be the specific empirical field of research. Communication, i.e. the ways how creativity becomes expressed and thus socially “visible” to others, will provide the focus for both and the third pillar of the conference. Since the combination of the three topics is not the starting point of the conference but, hopefully, its potential result, this general concept can be translated into a more concrete structure of the conference. The goal of the conference is to link the three topics, theories of culture, empirical studies of creativity and analyses of the effects of communication and mediatization on culture and creativity.

A number of key note speakers are invited to the conference, including Nick Couldry, Antoine Hennion, Andreas Hepp, Michael Hutter, Mark Jacobs, Karin Knorr, Rudi Laermans, Geert Lovink, Celia Lury, Knut Lundby, Tia de Nora, Andy Pratt, Andreas Reckwitz and Anna-Lisa Tota.
 In addition, we are inviting researchers who are working at the interface of two of the notions mentioned to apply for the conference (Creativity and Culture, Culture and Communication, Communication and Creativity). If you are interested, please send an abstract of up to one page at latest by March 31st 2012 to


culture@as.tu-berlin.de [1]

For further information about the conference visit the conference website: http://culture-communication-creativity.eu/ [2]