Study Centre

Studium Generale is the annual meeting between the Open University of Catalonia and the Museo Reina Sofía as part of their collaboration on the Bachelor of Arts degree. The name of the meeting refers to the name given to the compendium of schools during the Middle Ages: a kind of open proto-university that brought together teachers, students and teachings from different disciplines and geographical origins. The meeting combines moments of conviviality between the academic community and the museum teams with a public programme of events focusing on contemporary debates that animate artistic practice and research.

Sociología Ordinaria is a research group from the Complutense University of Madrid’s (UCM) Sociology Department. Formed in 2011, its concerns revolve around developing new research and teaching methodologies that enable sociological imagination to be applied to contemporary daily life. The group seeks to place value on the dense socio-political roots of the ordinary, an aspect which is often indiscernible in predominant academic analysis. Under the slogan “learning from the banal, the frivolous and the superficial”, its members look to render an account of the complexity and power relations underlying such diverse social and cultural phenomena as the use of dating apps, language around COVID-19, the world of the cuplé, reality shows, pyjama parties, popstars, TikTokers and club culture.