Welcome remarks by José Manuel Mendes (Director of FEUC), Tiago Santos Pereira (Director of CES), Teresa Almeida Cravo (FEUC/CES) and Carlos Fortuna (FEUC/CES). Introduction of the speaker and moderation by Claudino Ferreira (FEUC/CES)

About Justin O'Connor

Justin O’Connor’s PhD was on “Intellectuals and the People in France, 1820-1968”. Since then, he has been working in the field of cultural policy and theory, an increasingly critical engagement with cultural policy, especially around “cultural and creative industries” and the idea of the ‘creative city’. Starting in Manchester in the 1990s, his policy and academic work have developed to take in Europe, Russia, and China. His book Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in Modern China came out in 2020. He has worked for UNESCO “Expert Facility” on the 2005 Convention, and more working to develop the United Nations agenda around culture as a global public good and as a stand-alone Sustainable Development Goal.

With his work on Reset program (a collaboration involving art and culture practitioners, policymakers and academics from all three universities in South Australia) and his new book, Culture is Not an Industry, Justin O’Connor seeks to move cultural policy away from creative economy towards a full restatement of culture as a public good and its centrality to any civilised, just society. He is currently working on a history of cultural politics since the 1960s and the rise of popular culture, and also critique of current cultural policies in Europe and UNESCO.