The Department of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University is going to implement a grant in the field of the humanities led by Karolina Golemo, Ph.D., from the Institute of Intercultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University, a winner of an international contest of the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) network. The research consortium includes the following partners: Professor Ian Woodward, Syddansk Universitet in Denmark (leader), Pauwke Berkers, Ph.D., Erasmus University in the Netherlands, Aileen Dillane, Ph.D., University of Limerick in Ireland, and Jo Haynes, Ph.D., University of Bristol in the UK. Karolina Golemo will perform a 3-year research project entitled “European Music Festivals, Public Spaces and Cultural Diversity,” in short: FestiVersities.

FestiVersities is a comparative study of music festivals as places which facilitate encounters with cultural diversity. Contemporarily, participation in festivals is an important manifestation of cultural consumption in Europe. Festival spaces have the potential to connect people and reinforce tolerance, but simultaneously, they may also reinforce all kinds of inequalities and social exclusion. The originators of the project intend to learn how to define cultural diversity and models of its management, as well as examining how this diversity (in the social-cultural, ethnic, racial, sexual/gender, etc. aspects) manifests itself in the context of music festivals in Europe. The subject of analysis will be the phenomena observable on the stage and around it, but also everything that happens besides it, “behind the scenes.” In order to learn about and understand the complex process of festival organization, from planning to implementation, it will be necessary to assume different perspectives, and listen to different people acting in the festival space: organizers, festival staff, artists, the public, and the local community. The experiences of individuals and meanings ascribed by them, as well as individual profiles of participation, will constitute the core of the analysis. The main approach will be qualitative  (i.a., participative observation, interviews, or audio-visual ethnographic methods). Cooperation with non-academic partners, or stakeholders, both at the international and the local levels, will support the research (the Krakow Festival Office is a partner in the Polish part of the project). A significant challenge for the team is the practical application of the project results, that is, working out recommendations for festival organizers so that they could better promote diversity, a sense of community, and social solidarity.

The Polish part of the project, led by Karolina Golemo, Ph.D., concerns, among other things, the role of music festivals as spaces for Poles to encounter cultural differences, to define being European and to define the image of Poland in Europe, as well as opportunities and obstacles in intercultural dialogue, and the perception of diversity in the context of social inequalities and the center-peripheries relationship.

Karolina Golemo, Ph.D., is a sociologist of culture and a culture studies expert; she deals with the cultural diversity of Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, migration processes, and issues of image and stereotypes in the media and culture. Currently, she is focusing on music in intercultural relationships and the issues of the identity and artistic creation of migrants. She also has a musical education (music high school diploma, having studied piano), https://jagiellonian.academia.edu/KarolinaGolemo