LICA offers an enormously rich and thriving interdisciplinary research culture. We have a commitment to contemporary practice and critical thinking in the arts and foster cutting-edge research activity on contemporaneity, interdisciplinarity, and cross-arts practice in the creative arts, media and related industries.
Lancaster is a renowned centre for leading contemporary practice in art, cultural studies, design, film, media, music and performance, and for scholarly and critical research into the historical, social and cultural context of creative practice. Located within a research-led university, it shares a commitment to the intellectual rigour necessary to inform the relationship between practice, criticism and theory.
Our staff are leaders in their fields. The UK government’s recent Research Assessment Exercise placed Art and Design research, which at Lancaster includes Music, Theatre, Film and New Media, in the UK’s top 3 with 80% of our research classed as world (4*) or internationally (3*) leading.
LICA is a dynamic and proactive research environment challenging and driving innovation in research, encouraging interdisciplinary collaborations, project development, and dissemination. New research initiatives have flourished within a university committed to quality, depth and rigour, assuring research excellence during this period of controlled growth. Interdisciplinarity, close connections with user communities, and professional orientation are also central to increasing the capacity and effectiveness of post-graduate provision, increasing funding for post-doctoral research, linking staff and post-graduate research to Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, and exploiting new international and European opportunities.
Our research is outward looking, involving the wider public, professionals, and policy-makers in the development and benefits of research. This combination of factors – research location, challenging creative practice, rigorous critical and theoretical enquiry, thriving cross and interdisciplinary initiatives, and a drive to engage with audiences and users – constitutes its distinctiveness and impact.
