Cultural Political Economy Research Centre (CPERC)

Description

The idea of a post-disciplinary Cultural Political Economy Research Centre was inspired by Lancaster's unique learning and researching environment, with its tradition of interdepartmental research collaborations.

The objective of the Centre is to enhance such trans- and post-disciplinary work in the fields of critical semiotic analysis, critical political economy and critical governance studies. Its aim is to provide a hub for studying and applying cultural political economy as a cutting-edge approach to a wide range of theoretical, substantive, and policy issues for the 21st century. To this end, the Centre brings together researchers who work in and beyond Lancaster on themes such as competitiveness, moral economy, political and economic imaginaries and crisis management.

The Centre has held various seminars on these issues and provides for regular meetings in a reading group and an annual workshop. Its directors disseminate the generated insights widely in keynotes and publications. They have been successful in raising funds for the Centre’s activities and for launching a range of research projects that draw on cultural political economy as research paradigm.

The Centre was set up with the support of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Lancaster University. In 2004, the Institute’s incubation programme granted £2000 to a cultural political economy research cluster organised by Ngai-Ling Sum. This grant supported a Lancaster University reading group over three years, three annual international workshops, and a working paper series hosted on the Institute for Ad website. With Lancaster as the lead university, a successful bid (£14596) was submitted to the Economic and Social Research Council in 2007, supported by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. The Economic and Social Research Council seminar series explored six themes on Changing Cultures of Competitiveness. Concurrent with this development was the participation of Jessop and Sum in a three-year EU Framework 6 DEMOLOGOS research programme between 2004 and 2007. Together with one Asian and six other European universities, the project used cultural political economy as one of the key research paradigms. This work, which was based on cultural political economy as a major research paradigm, has been continued in a project on Changing Cultures of Competitiveness in India and China funded by the British Academy (£75000, 2008-2010) and in a ESRC Professorial Fellowship which deals with a cultural political economy of the current financial and economic crisis (£455,445.76, 2010-2013).

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

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Lancaster University
Bailrigg
Lancaster
LA1 4YW