Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives)
Reporting period: 2020-06-01 to 2021-10-31
DETECt—Detecting Transcultural Identities in European Popular Crime Narratives studied the production, distribution, and reception of contemporary European crime narratives as a characteristic example of popular culture in Europe. Overall, we found that these popular stories—or, more often, narrative series—offer great, underexploited opportunities for the dissemination of a cosmopolitan attitude and a transcultural identity among European audiences. We asked: What makes a European crime narrative product recognizable as European? Does the diversity of European culture stimulate or rather inhibits the production and circulation of narrative products able to travel beyond borders? What can Europe do to support the production and transnational circulation of popular narrative products that express aspects of Europe’s transcultural identity in innovative and engaging ways? How can popular culture be taught in both university courses and informal learning environments as a subject to learn about Europe’s history, economy, politics, and evolving society? The research programme involved a transnational learning experimentation, the creation of a MOOC and other learning materials on a dedicated virtual environment. This integrated approach to one of the most popular genres of contemporary European cultural production aimed to provide significant insights towards the elaboration of better strategies for transcultural integration in both European research and European education.
To respond to the multiple challenges of collaborative research in a transcultural, transdisciplinary, multilinguistic environment, as well as to ensure adequate dissemination of research findings, DETECt devised an innovative methodology to assist the integration of research, learning and public engagement activities. The initial phase of research was focused on establishing the methodological framework and designing and implementing the project’s portal, which has worked as the digital hub for the project’s activities. The semantic modelling of the domain has provided a base for structuring the semantic architecture of both DETECt portal and the project’s five main research areas: Space and place, History and politics, Production and distribution, Promotion and reception, Diversity.
During the first year, the consortium accomplished the difficult task of determining the nature and properties of a possible representative corpus for the study of transcultural identities in European crime narratives. Data collection provided the material to produce a corpus of European trans and cross-media crime series that has been studied with digital methodologies to produce visualizations and graphs that show the different geographical distribution and gender ratio of the most innovative formats that have been travelling across Europe. In the later phases of the project this corpus also provided dozens of case studies that have been further investigated throughout the project’s numerous scholarly publications.
From the second year, the consortium worked to create the digital learning materials that the project was committed to produce. Initially drafted on the DETECt portal and offered in this experimental form to university students in four different countries, these materials were later be revised, reedited, and transformed into the texts and videos finally published in DETECt MOOC ‘Euronoir: Cultural identity in European Popular Crime Narratives’. This period also saw the start of the work to produce DETECt webapp, a touristic application offering guided city tours on the trail of popular crime and noir stories. The first version of this output, DETECt Aarhus, was delivered in July 2020.
The project’s timeline and coordination activities were profoundly disrupted by the advent of the pandemic. Despite many challenges, and thanks to a three-month postponement of the project’s deadline, DETECt successfully managed to pursue its research programme into the final period. The first instance of DETECt MOOC was launched in February 2021. The DETECt Bologna app was launched in October the same year. The project delivered three policy briefs: ‘Creative Europe’s Support for European TV Fiction Programming’; ‘Cultural Diversity on VOD Platforms’; and ‘Cultural Studies and the Transnationalization of the European Higher Education Area
in the Age of Digital Learning’.
During the first year, the consortium accomplished the difficult task of determining the nature and properties of a possible representative corpus for the study of transcultural identities in European crime narratives. Data collection provided the material to produce a corpus of European trans and cross-media crime series that has been studied with digital methodologies to produce visualizations and graphs that show the different geographical distribution and gender ratio of the most innovative formats that have been travelling across Europe. In the later phases of the project this corpus also provided dozens of case studies that have been further investigated throughout the project’s numerous scholarly publications.
From the second year, the consortium worked to create the digital learning materials that the project was committed to produce. Initially drafted on the DETECt portal and offered in this experimental form to university students in four different countries, these materials were later be revised, reedited, and transformed into the texts and videos finally published in DETECt MOOC ‘Euronoir: Cultural identity in European Popular Crime Narratives’. This period also saw the start of the work to produce DETECt webapp, a touristic application offering guided city tours on the trail of popular crime and noir stories. The first version of this output, DETECt Aarhus, was delivered in July 2020.
The project’s timeline and coordination activities were profoundly disrupted by the advent of the pandemic. Despite many challenges, and thanks to a three-month postponement of the project’s deadline, DETECt successfully managed to pursue its research programme into the final period. The first instance of DETECt MOOC was launched in February 2021. The DETECt Bologna app was launched in October the same year. The project delivered three policy briefs: ‘Creative Europe’s Support for European TV Fiction Programming’; ‘Cultural Diversity on VOD Platforms’; and ‘Cultural Studies and the Transnationalization of the European Higher Education Area
in the Age of Digital Learning’.
In sum, DETECt has produced a substantial body of new knowledge and innovative transdisciplinary expertise that is already having an impact in terms of the sheer number of publications written by DETECt scholars, already appeared or forthcoming within the next year, which include 7 journal special issues, 2 edited collections, one monograph and at least 28 individual articles and book chapters. At the very least, this has contributed to bring forward a European angle in the scholarly approach to contemporary popular culture. At the best, it will keep on fertilizing research in the still undeveloped field of European Cultural Studies. This objective was pursued through conferences, seminars, workshops and official courses delivered in ten countries by the thirteen academic partners of the consortium, as well as through the creation of a variety of digital learning materials and DETECt MOOC ‘Euronoir: Cultural identity in European Popular Crime Narratives’.
In addition, DETECt has also focused its attention to the dissemination among professionals and citizens in general through public engagement initiatives, including the exhibition ‘L’Europe du polar’ and a very successful screenwriting contest, which invited to submit concepts for innovative crime series interrogating the notion of Europe and Europeanness. This last initiative brought about several dozens of remarkably interesting storylines, stimulating an upsurge of imagination that might hopefully have an impact on the contents of future European television.
DETECt research on the representation of space and place, historical memory and diversity has been applied to a fruitful collaboration with tourism organizations for the development of a digital application offering guided city tours on the trail of popular crime and noir stories. DETECt webapp is freely usable onsite in the cities of Aarhus and Bologna, offering an innovative tool for the touristic promotion of these two cities.
DETECt policy briefs have provided recommendations on issues such as the evaluation criteria of the Creative Europe-Media programme, provisions to be taken to increase exposure diversity on the market of VoD platforms (including specific measures to support the circulation of Regional and Minority Language media), and how Cultural studies may help the transnationalization of the European Higher Education area.
In addition, DETECt has also focused its attention to the dissemination among professionals and citizens in general through public engagement initiatives, including the exhibition ‘L’Europe du polar’ and a very successful screenwriting contest, which invited to submit concepts for innovative crime series interrogating the notion of Europe and Europeanness. This last initiative brought about several dozens of remarkably interesting storylines, stimulating an upsurge of imagination that might hopefully have an impact on the contents of future European television.
DETECt research on the representation of space and place, historical memory and diversity has been applied to a fruitful collaboration with tourism organizations for the development of a digital application offering guided city tours on the trail of popular crime and noir stories. DETECt webapp is freely usable onsite in the cities of Aarhus and Bologna, offering an innovative tool for the touristic promotion of these two cities.
DETECt policy briefs have provided recommendations on issues such as the evaluation criteria of the Creative Europe-Media programme, provisions to be taken to increase exposure diversity on the market of VoD platforms (including specific measures to support the circulation of Regional and Minority Language media), and how Cultural studies may help the transnationalization of the European Higher Education area.