Director of CCIG Professor Elizabeth Silva introduces the centre and its work.
CCIG
The Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) is an interdisciplinary research centre within The Open University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Since 2003 it has led research and debate on citizenship, identity formation and practices of governance and, through its use and development of creative methods, it continues to tackle some of society’s most urgent social, political and ethical issues.
CCIG’s work draws attention to the heterogeneity, tensions and contradictions that make up social and political relations. Citizenship, identities and governance are terms that cross disciplinary boundaries and members’ research encompasses social policy, geography, sociology, political science, psychology, religion and cultural studies. In particular, it focuses on changing institutions, policies and cultural practices.
Citizenship: The governance and contestation of identities within and across diverse and pluralistic social worlds or polities. The distinctive contribution of our research has been to reconnect this to ethical and institutional questions.
Identities: The dynamic making of selves. Our research blends post-structuralism, social constructionism, discourse analysis and psychology/psychoanalysis in a broadly critical theoretical tradition to explore identities including gender, ethnicity, social class, disability, sexuality and age.
Governance: Debates about shifts in power and authority. As the boundaries – between state and civil society, public and private, global and local – become increasingly contested, new forms of governmental strategy seek to reconstitute ideas of identity and belonging.
