Centre for Digital Cultures

Organisational unit: Institute

Organisation profile

The Centre for Digital Cultures (CDC) unites a large range of research and development activities dedicated to the digital shift. It engages in knowledge creation and transfer, experimental and interventionist media practices, and research in disciplines such as media, social and cultural studies. The CDC aims to both understand the epochal digital shift through excellent research, and to become one of the major European forces that shape digital cultures to come.

The CDC has seen a remarkable uptake of successful funding bids. The major projects are funded by the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE) and the State of Lower Saxony, by the German Research Council (DFG) and the VW Foundation respectively. Additional smaller projects are supported by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Transmediale, and the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF). The CDC has by now more than 80 researchers and cultural producers from all over the world. They work on questions such as:

  • Transmedia: How can we understand and develop new formats for entertainment as well as culture and education, merging different forms of production, participation, distribution and aesthetics?
  • User and Audience Research: What kind of methods enable us to understand new usage and consumption patterns, addressing digital cultures’ both global and local audiences? 
  • Gamification: Computer games have a growing relevance in contemporary life, not only due to the games themselves, but also through their metaphors and methods. What new opportunities arise?
  • Common Media: Which new forms of citizenship and cultural/political engagement are developing in the digital age, and how can we understand, enact and strengthen them?
  • Net based Public Broadcast: How can publicly funded provision of information, education, culture and entertainment adapt to the internet? How can new versions of basic provision be realized?
  • Hybrid Publishing: Which avenues for the communication and dissemination of knowledge beyond classrooms and research articles can be constructed, adapting the cultural and economic logic of the digital age?
  • Computer Simulation: From climate change to mass panics: Knowledge production based on computer simulation is shaping our worldview. How can we analyse and understand its effects?

Research and development at the CDC traverse boundaries between the academic sector, culture and the arts, industry, governmental bodies and civil society. It is a conducive, productive and experimental research environment, in which researchers and entrepreneurs, activists and artists, producers and hackers, thinkers and doers broker dynamic connections. Visions, blueprints and experimental findings get exposed to real-world conditions. The development of innovative teaching formats is a further crucial part of the mix: Leuphana Digital School is bringing knowledge and education online, and a new English-speaking Bachelor in Digital Media started in autumn 2013, developed in cooperation with Leuphana’s Institute for the Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media, Hamburg Media School and Hongkong City University. The result is a new, open and engaged form of research and development for Europe’s digital cultures.

Topics

  • Transmedia
  • User and Audience Research 
  • Gamification
  • Common Media
  • Net based Public Broadcast
  • Hybrid Publishing
  • Computer Simulation
  • Artistic Research
  • New Teaching Formats
  1. Published

    The Creativity Complex: A Companion to Contemporary Culture

    Metelmann, J. (ed.) & Beyes, T. (ed.), 2018, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. 255 p. (Kultur und Gesellschaft; vol. 36)

    Research output: Books and anthologiesCollected editions and anthologiesResearch

  2. Published

    The Environmentalitarian Situation: Reflections on the Becoming-Environmental of Thinking, Power, and Capital

    Hörl, E., 01.07.2018, In: Cultural Politics. 14, 2, p. 153-173 21 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  3. Published

    The financialisation of business ethics

    Beverungen, A., Dunne, S. & Hoedemaekers, C., 01.01.2013, In: Business Ethics: A European Review. 22, 1, p. 102-117 16 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  4. Published

    The "Hidden Homeless" in Japan’s Contemporary Mobile Culture

    Yoshida, M., 2013, Asian Popular Culture in Transition. Fitzsimmons, L. & Lent, J. A. (eds.). London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, p. 97-107 11 p. (Routledge contemporary Asia series; vol. 36).

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapterpeer-review

  5. Published

    The Island of the Day After. The Television Series Lost and the Post-9/11-Era

    Niemeyer, K. & Wentz, D., 2018, Lost In Media. Wentz, D., Beil, B. & Schwaab, H. (eds.). Wien: LIT Verlag, p. 137-154 18 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearch

  6. Published

    ”The Machine Could Swallow Everything”: Satin Island and Performing Organization

    Beyes, T., 31.12.2016, Performing the Digital: Performativity and Performance Studies in Digital Cultures. v. Leeker, M., Schipper, I. & Beyes, T. (eds.). Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, p. 229–244 16 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearchpeer-review

  7. Published

    The media arcane

    Beyes, T. & Pias, C., 01.05.2019, In: Grey Room. 75, Spring, p. 84-107 24 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  8. Published

    The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibilities of Life in Capitalist Ruins

    Conrad, L., 04.2021, In: Management Learning. 52, 2, p. 255-259 5 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsCritical reviewsResearch

  9. Published

    The Network Dynamics of Movements

    Apprich, C., 2014, In: spheres - Journal for Digital Cultures. 1, 1, p. 1-4 4 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsCritical reviewsResearch

  10. Published

    The organizational a priori: Critique of the digital as critique of organization

    Beyes, T., 2021, Critique and the Digital. Hörl, E., Pinkrah, N. Y. & Warnholdt, C. L. (eds.). Zürich/Berlin: Diaphanes Verlag, p. 229-248 20 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearchpeer-review

  11. Published

    The organizational powers of (digital) media

    Beverungen, A., Beyes, T. & Conrad, L., 01.09.2019, In: Organization. 26, 5, p. 621-635 15 p., 867206.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  12. Published

    The Organization is a Repair Shop

    Conrad, L., 05.2019, In: Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. 19, 2, p. 303-324 22 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  13. Published

    The Ornament of Mass Customization: On the Collective Consciousness of Dispersed Examiners

    Simons, S., 2016, Social Media: New Masses. Baxmann, I., Beyes, T. & Pias, C. (eds.). Zürich: Diaphanes Verlag, p. 225-246 22 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearchpeer-review

  14. Published

    The Oxford Handbook on Media, Technology and Organization Studies

    Beyes, T. (ed.), Holt, R. (ed.) & Pias, C. (ed.), 12.12.2019, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 560 p.

    Research output: Books and anthologiesCollected editions and anthologiesTransfer

  15. Published

    The performatization of space: Comments on the historicity of knowledge and technology in the construction of contemporary performance spaces

    Leeker, M., Baumgärtel, S. A. & Corrêa, T., 24.09.2020, In: URDIMENTO-REVISTA DE ESTUDOS EM ARTES CENICAS. 2, 38, p. 1-27 27 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  16. Published

    The Political Economy of Corporate Governance

    Jansson, A., Larsson-Olaison, U., Veldman, J. & Beverungen, A., 02.2016, In: Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization. 16, 1, p. 1-17 17 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsOther (editorial matter etc.)Research

  17. Published

    The Politics of Micro-Decisions: Edward Snowden, Net Neutrality and the Architecture of the Internet

    Sprenger, F., 2015, Lüneburg: meson press. 127 p. (Digital Cultures Series)

    Research output: Books and anthologiesMonographsResearchpeer-review

  18. Published

    The poverty of journal publishing

    Beverungen, A., Böhm, S. & Land, C., 01.11.2012, In: Organization. 19, 6, p. 929-938 10 p.

    Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

  19. Published

    The Power of Information: A Journey Back in Time to the Faultlines of Globalization, Art, and Media in the Early 1990s

    Bunz, M., 2013, The whole earth: California and the disappearance of the outside. Diederichsen, D. & Franke, A. (eds.). Berlin: Sternberg Press, p. 172-176 5 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearchpeer-review

  20. Published

    There is no software, there are just services

    Kaldrack, I. (ed.) & Leeker, M. (ed.), 2015, Lüneburg: meson press. 114 p. (Digital Cultures)

    Research output: Books and anthologiesCollected editions and anthologiesResearch