Frequently Asked Questions

The IECIS Research Institute is connected to modern foreign languages - why is this?
A. Self always implies Other. In studying the languages of our European neighbours, we accede to the culture of the language and to the recognition of the particular programmes of identity formed and expressedwithin it. That involves discovering things we hadn't properly noticed before or methodically explored in our own culture. Not least, that we, too, are culturally programmed in ways which define 'us'. That's the gateway in to the more general study known as the 'poetics ' of cultural identity.

Do you just concentrate on the present day?
A. No. Just as our study of Europe is central, but not exclusive, we also consider how particular identities vary in time and reflect cultural change.

What sort of materials do you study?
A. Identity programmes are decipherable across the entire range of cultural manifestations (including, pre-eminently: literature and the arts, politics, social practices, rites, ideologies, myths etc not forgetting language itself. They are decipherable in the entirety of a cultures signs (linguistic, textual, graphic, cinematographic, etc) and all its component codes (e.g. the discourse of fault and penitence of the wartime French Vichy regime...).

Does that mean you have to be interdisciplinary?
A. Yes! Deciphering these signs engages the whole of human reality hence also the help of the insights and perspectives of all cognate human sciences (social anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, political history, the history of ideas, sensibilities and thought forms; psychology, even theology ...).

Is Cultural Identity Studies an established discipline?
A. It's a significant new interdisciplinary area of study, which is developing its key concepts and methodologies right now, in dialogue with the established disciplines on which it draws. That makes it an interesting and wide-open area in which to do research work. It offers great opportunities for those with a sense of intellectual adventure. It is looking, from outside Academe and from within, as a new frontier.

What are the qualities it requires?
A. You need competent reading knowledge of a modern foreign language; proven ability to analyse texts, documents and visual materials and to manage ideas; flexibility to cope with the diversity of perspectives and methods of study; an ability to see the broader picture and to synthesise boldly; real intellectual curiosity about how collective identities work and what culture contributes to them.