Area of expertise

The Graduate program of the Department leads to an MA in “Networking Cities and Representations”.

The MA is an inter-disciplinary program which combines urban cultural studies with cultural presentation and communication theories and methodologies with the use of ICT.

The aim of the MA is to provide students with a background in Humanities, Social Science, Economics, Architecture, Media and Communication Studies, Heritage Management and Cultural Informatics, with strong research skills and advanced academic foundation in the study, design and implementation of projects on cultural communication and representation processes in the urban environment. Likewise in the frame of the growing presence and impact of digital technologies and the establishment of new urban realities, a range of issues on interpretation and semiotic analysis of social actuality is explored and discussed.

Technological advances and the spread of their use have transformed urban spaces creating new fields of action and representation for urban residents and users. Cities contain historical content highlighted and symbolized due to ideological, economic or aesthetic motivations. Memory, individual and collective, creates and reproduces narratives and urban myths, presenting different and not always similar versions of the past. Spatial fields of collective expression, where cultural representations evolve, include public spaces such as streets, squares, stadiums, theaters, cinemas, archaeological sites, places of memory, museums, exhibitions, etc. The blending of these spatial fields with the evolving technologies results in networking cities in terms of both time and space, which are further enhanced by the cultural communication among inhabitants. Networking cities have the potential of altering the aesthetics of cities and producing cultural capital. The program aims at providing education and training on the study of such forms of representation and corresponding intervention in urban spaces.