Carla examines international cultural relations as a transdisciplinary field & is interested cultural/language policies.
Carla Figueira, BA MA PhD FHEA FRSA, is an academic in the field of international cultural relations and cultural and linguistic policies. She is the Director of the MA in Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy and of the MA in Tourism and Cultural Policy at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Carla is an international relations graduate of the Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (Portugal), she moved to London after a career in arts management. In the UK, she went on to gain an MA in Arts Management (City University, UK, Chevening Scholar) and a PhD in Cultural Policy and Management (City University, UK, Praxis XXI Scholar).
Carla is a member of ENCATC, the leading European network on Cultural Management and Cultural Policy education. She is a Chevening Alumna and Buddy.
Academic qualifications
PhD in Cultural Policy and Management (City University, UK, Praxis XXI Scholar)
MA in Arts Management (City University, UK, Chevening Scholar)
Bachelor’s degree (Licenciatura) in International Relations, with specialisation in Cultural and Political Relations (ISCSP, Lisbon, Portugal)
Carla is interested in international cultural relations as a transdisciplinary field. She is also interested in the areas of cultural policy, cultural and creative industries, arts management and in language policy.
Her research interests encompass several academic disciplines, including international studies, history, cultural studies, sociology, linguistics and psychology. Keywords she has used to describe her work include: cultural diplomacy, cultural relations, sociolinguistics, language-spread policies, international cultural policy, international organisations, hegemony, soft power.
She is available to supervise PhD candidates that share her research interests.
Former PhD students include:
Dr Chun-Ying Wei "Taiwan's Cultural Diplomacy and Cultural Policy: A Case Study Focusing on Performing Arts: 1990-2014"
Dr Musa Igrek "Books as Cultural Diplomacy: A Case Study of the British Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD): 1948-1956"
Dr Evgeniya Kondrashina "Music from beyond the Curtain: Soviet Music Recordings and Cold War Cultural Relations, 1950-80"
Dr Kathrin Schmidt "Performing Salone – The impact of local and global flows on the aesthetics and ecology of contemporary Krio theatre in Sierra Leone"
Figueira, Carla. 2015. Cultural Diplomacy and the 2005 UNESCO Convention. In: Christiaan De Beukelaer; Miikka Pyykkönen and J P Singh, eds. Globalization, culture and development: the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137397621
Carla is a trustee of Arts Cabinet – Art and Enquiry (https://www.artscabinet.org/), a charity raising awareness of the critical state of cultural production through arts and culture exchange programmes that draw on challenges posed by global issues.
Carla is supportive of her former students and enjoys collaborating with them. In May 2018 she hosted Dispossessions: Performative Encounter(s) of Taiwanese Indigenous Contemporary Art with Biung Ismahasan, a Curator from the Bunun Nation – one of the sixteen officially recognised Indigenous peoples of Taiwan – who was one of her first students on the MA Cultural Policy, Relations and Diplomacy. The event raised awareness of the largely overlooked work of Indigenous contemporary artists from non-Western countries in London. See: https://biungismahasan.weebly.com/dispossessions-exhibition-programme
Consultancy work & other
In parallel with her teaching and researching academic career, Carla Figueira is a consultant in the area of cultural and language policy, the cultural and creative sectors, and cultural diplomacy. Carla is currently a UN consultant with UNCTAD working on the mapping and development of the cultural and creative industries in Angola. Previous consultancy work includes the EU project mapping the use of culture in external relations, informing the future EU strategy: Preparatory Action Culture in EU External Relations.
She is also an experienced arts manager, having worked, for almost a decade, for the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Lisbon, Portugal. Her last position there was Director of the Municipal Sound Library, heading a team of 13 staff. From 2009 to 2011, Carla was the Co-ordinator of the UK Committee of the European Cultural Foundation.
Carla is involved in different networks and platforms related to international cultural relations and cultural policy. Besides being a member of ENCATC’s Europe International group, through which she delivers annually cultural relations and diplomacy academies since 2012, Carla has close associations with other cultural policy and arts management networks worldwide: the Association of Arts Administration Educators; ANCER, the Asia Pacific’s Network for Cultural Education and Research; and the Taiwan Association of Cultural Policy Studies TACPS.
She is also a member of two networks interested in cultural diplomacy, which originated in the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council funded programme Translating Cultures: Understanding the Role of Cultural Products in Cultural Diplomacy and Diplomatic Cultures. She runs the JISCmail open listings International Cultural Relations Multidisciplinary Forum and Cultural Tourism and Policy Forum.
