Organisation profile
Layman's description
Research within this research dimension takes place at the level of collective identities. Nation and national identity definitions are the dynamic and often contentious result of political, social and cultural processes of meaning and value assignment. Historical research in cultural sciences is concerned with, among other things, the formation of the nation-state since 1750, looking at both the physical and institutional “spaces” of the nation-state, as well as its “imaginary” space: the mental space of shared and controversial symbols, ideas and rituals in which the representation of a past, whether or not supposedly shared, plays a central role.