Culture, Media and Performative Arts

The programme connects professionally oriented experience with research training and leads students towards critical reflection on media content, media institutions, and the relationships between producers, products, and their users. In this way, it strengthens their scholarly and professional competitiveness. At a time when the influence of media on the formation of attitudes, public debates, and social groups is increasing, the social significance of anthropologically and socially grounded research into media industries, cultural institutions, and audiences is also growing.

The programme therefore educates future teachers, researchers, journalists, cultural-sector professionals, and specialists working in media and the creative industries. Its aim is to develop the ability to critically reflect on the relationships between media production, cultural contexts, institutional environments, and modes of reception.

The study programme is implemented at the intersection of the teaching and research profiles of the four participating departments. Social anthropology provides methodological training for field research; media studies develop students’ ability to work with audiovisual technology both as a research tool and as an object of analysis, and introduce appropriate social-science methods; theatre studies focus on the study of performative action in public space; and film studies contribute through the analysis of the aesthetic and institutional frameworks of media production, distribution, and reception.

Students thus acquire practical skills, especially basic technical competence in working with audio, photographic, and video material, as well as the fundamentals of academic and journalistic writing, cultural-historical knowledge, and analytical tools for the critical evaluation of media products and of the processes through which they are produced and circulated. The programme links education aimed at critical understanding of other cultures, analysis of media production, and understanding of historical contexts and trends. It therefore offers competences that are currently needed and whose importance is likely to continue growing.

The programme is strongly interdisciplinary: it combines a humanities-based focus on the historical, aesthetic, and cultural contexts of artistic creation and media production with social-science methods for analysing their production, institutional background, and reception.

Upon successful completion of the programme, the graduate is able to:

• independently apply research techniques for analyses of data by using contemporary statistical and interpretational methods;
• understand social relevancies of social phenomena within a wide scale of complexities;
• interpret media content and protocols within media production in their relevant historical and cultural contexts;
• apply methods for anthropological, media, and historical research;
• use photo, video and audio techniques for data collection and analysis;
• become orientated in culturally different environments.

As a graduate, you will be well prepared to continue in Master’s programmes across a wide range of specialisations and countries. The programme will equip you for admission to English-taught graduate programmes such as Cultural Sociology, Conflict and Democracy Studies, or International Relations, to name only a few of the programmes offered at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. 

If you acquire sufficient command of Czech, you will also be able to continue in a broader spectrum of Master’s programmes, including anthropology, media studies, the history and theory of cinema, theatre, and television, as well as more professionally oriented programmes in filmmaking, film and television dramaturgy, or production, for example at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

After completing the programme, you will be prepared for work in selected areas of the media industries, especially film and television production, as well as in cultural management, festival and event organisation, cultural and media institutions, NGOs focused on transcultural dialogue or education, print and online media, and cultural administration in public institutions or local government.

The combination of cultural and historical knowledge, basic technical skills, methodological training, analytical competence, and intercultural experience provided by the programme will give you a strong and flexible profile on the job market. You will be able to pursue research, organisational, managerial, or communication-oriented roles in a wide range of cultural, media, and social institutions.

You will develop practical research and communication skills, including basic technical competence in working with audio, photographic, and video material for research, analytical, and journalistic purposes. You will also strengthen your academic writing, critical analysis, and ability to present and communicate cultural and media-related topics to broader audiences. At the same time, you will acquire the historical knowledge and analytical tools necessary for the critical study of media products, media institutions, and the processes of cultural and media production.

In other words, the programme offers competences that are currently highly relevant and in demand, and whose importance is likely to grow in the future. An important aspect of the programme is the opportunity to gain first-hand experience through internships and fieldwork in cultural and media environments: for example, at regional film, television, or theatre festivals such as the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, One World, Ekofilm, or Mezipatra, in Czech public service media, or in regional cultural institutions. These experiences are not designed as professional filmmaking training, but as opportunities to observe, analyse, and understand how cultural and media institutions operate in practice.

Finally, we will encourage you to bring into the programme your own knowledge of the cultural, social, and media contexts of your country or region. Critical understanding of culture grows most effectively through the sharing of diverse experiences, perspectives, and forms of knowledge.