Manager: Dr Maria-Laura MORENO-SAINZ
Disciplines involved: Anthropology; French Language and Literature; Political Science; English Language and Cultures; Geography; Modern History; Linguistics; Sociology; Philosophy
Topic and goals:
The ‘Culture(s), Language and Imagination’ research group carries out transdisciplinary research with the goal of exploring the depictions conveyed by language, literature and discourse. Its members work on ancient and contemporary corpora from different cultural spheres, with both synchronic and diachronic approaches.
Flagship project for 2025-2030: ‘Dynamics of the Near and the Far: Spatialities and Movements’
How do language, literature, discourse, lived experience and practices (cultural, social, political, religious, etc.) convey representations of what is perceived, experienced and conceived as close or distant by a group (social, political, religious, etc.) at a particular moment in history and within a given cultural sphere? Group 3’s research will build on the work carried out in the previous period through a second strand, which will use a multidisciplinary approach to analyse different forms of circulation and movement (mobility, displacement, migration, diasporas, various flows, exchanges, journeys and trajectories, itineraries, etc.) along three main lines of inquiry:
Theme 1 – Here and Elsewhere: Experiences and Accounts of Displacement
This theme explores the experience of ‘elsewhere’ and of displacement as conveyed through language, literature and discourse; it examines the construction of imaginary geographies, and the experience and perceptions of places of belonging that shape representations of identity and otherness, and normalise distances and proximities, as well as spatial and symbolic boundaries.
Theme 2 – Dynamics of convergence and divergence in conflict situations
This research area aims to explore the processes, issues, discourses and representations at play in conflict situations, with a view to understanding the dynamics of convergence and divergence at various scales. To what extent (and in what ways) can spatiality and movements in conflict contexts convey contested meanings or, conversely, shared subjectivities?
Theme 3 – Spaces of liminality between humans and other than humans
This research area, situated at the intersection of anthropology and literature, aims to explore in greater depth the category of the ‘non-human’, situated within a fruitful dynamic between the near and the far, in order to examine, through plural ontologies, various ways of being in the world: hybrid and interstitial spaces through which living and non-living beings, fantastical creatures and supernatural entities circulate…
Scientific research at UCLy has become a priority which has led to the creation of this Research Center made up of eight research teams.