Dr Eleonora Belfiore is an Associate Professor at the Centre, Director of Graduate Studies, and one of the main tutors for the MA in International Cultural Policy and Management.

The investigation of the social impact of the arts, its place in cultural policy rhetoric and the notion of the transformative power of the arts that underline the impact discourse have been a long standing research interest for Eleonora since her MA dissertation was reworked into a journal article and published in 2002 with the title "Art as a means of alleviating social exclusion: Does it really work? A critique of instrumental cultural policies and social impact studies in the UK". Since then, Eleonora has researched and published widely on the question of impact, its definition and measurement, and the role of the Humanities in impact research.

Between 2004 and 2007, Eleonora worked on a 3-year research project on the social impact of the arts, jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England. The project’s main objective was a critical reformulation of the claims made about the impacts that the arts can have on the individual and society, with a view of investigating the possibility of developing a rigorous framework and methodology for impact assessment.

From September 2008, Eleonora has been working, together with Dr Anna Upchurch of Leeds University, on a project funded by the AHRC entitled "Beyond utility and markets: Articulating the role of the humanities in the twenty-first century", in collaboration with Dr Donna Zapf of Duke University. The project explores the question of the articulation of the functions and value of Humanities research beyond a narrowly instrumental and utilitarian emphasis on notions of 'impact' and 'utility'.

The workshop series has now developed into a book project: a collection of essays (some original and some developed from workshop presentations) jointly edited by Eleonora and Dr Anna Upchurch is going to be published Palgrave in October 2012 with the title Humanities in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond utility and markets.

Eleonora is presently developing further her research in the areas of the definition of cultural value and its articulation in political debates around arts funding; the discursive nature of the cultural policy-making process, and theoretical and historical approaches to understanding contemporary policy-making in the cultural sector.

Current projects

• Eleonora is also currently working on an interdisciplinary project around Cultural Value and Cultural Politics. The project is financially supported by a grant from the Research Development Fund at Warwick University which will allow Eleonora to bring together at Warwick in June 2012, a group of researchers, artists, cultural professionals and policy makers to develop a new research agenda into 'cultural value'.

Research interests

Eleonora was awarded her PhD in 2006 having completed a thesis entitled "Ubi maior, minor cessat: A comparative study of the relation between changing cultural policy rationales and globalization in post-1980s England and Italy". In the course of her doctoral research, Eleonora has had the opportunity to develop her interest in cross-national cultural policy research and the methodological issues involved in it. One of her other main research interests is the way in which cultural policy overlaps with other areas of public policy-making, in particular social and economic policy. In particular, the social impacts of the arts and their role in debates over public funding of the arts represent one of the main focuses of Eleonora's current research.

Eleonora has also researched the ways in which global changes in public policy and administration, such as the spread of New Public Management – and the related growth in evidence-based policy and auditing mechanisms – have impacted on the subsidised cultural sector and affected cultural policy priorities and rationales. Most recently, Eleonora’s research interests have developed around the often unacknowledged role of deeply held beliefs and cultural values in the process of policy-making, especially in the context of the professed reliance on empirically acquired ‘evidence’ as a basis for decision making in the policy sphere.

Eleonora welcomes the opportunity of supervising PhD students in any of the above areas of research.

Representative publications

Belfiore, E. (2010)'Is it really all about the evidence? On the rhetorical aspect of cultural policy', paper delivered at the 2010 edition of the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research (ICCPR), Jyväskylä, 24-27 August 2010

Belfiore, E. & Bennett O. (2010) 'Beyond the ‘toolkit approach’: Arts impact evaluation research and the realities of cultural policy-making', Journal for Cultural Research, 14.2.

Belfiore, E. (2009) 'On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research: Notes from the British case', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15.1 (revised version of the ICCPR 2008 conference paper).

Belfiore, E. & Bennett O. (2009) 'Researching the Social Impact of the Arts: literature, fiction and the novel', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15.1

Belfiore, E. & Bennett O. (2008) The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History, Palgrave/Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Belfiore, E. (2008) 'On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research: Notes from the British case', paper delivered at the 2008 edition of the International Conference on Cultural Policy Research (ICCPR), Istanbul, 20-24 August 2008.

Belfiore, E. & Bennett O. (2007)'Determinants of impact: towards a better understanding of encounters with the arts', Cultural Trends 16.3.

Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. (2007) 'Rethinking the Social Impact of the Arts', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13.2

Belfiore, E. (2006) 'The unacknowledged legacy: Plato, the Republic and cultural policy', International Journal of Cultural Policy - Special issue - Intellectuals and Cultural Policy, Part I, 12.2 .

Belfiore, E. (2006) 'The social impacts of the arts – myth or reality?', in Mirza, M. (ed.) (2006) Culture Vultures: Is UK arts policy damaging the arts?, London: Policy Exchange.

Belfiore, E. (2004), The methodological challenge of cross-national research: comparing cultural policy in Britain and Italy (Coventry: Centre for Cultural Policy Studies).

Belfiore, E. (2004), 'Auditing Culture: the subsidized cultural sector in the New Public Management', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10.2.

Belfiore, E. (2003), 'Economic Impacts: Inconclusive Evidence', ArtsProfessional, Issue 43, 10 February

Belfiore E. (2002), 'Art as a means towards alleviating social exclusion: does it really work? – A critique of instrumental cultural policies and social impact studies in the UK', International Journal of Cultural Policy, 8.1.

Courses taught

Eleonora teaches the following modules of the MA in International Cultural Policy and Management:

• Cultural Theory
• European Cultural Policy: The Cultural dimension of European integration (not available in 2011-12)
• Ideas, Politics and Policy

Dr Eleonora Belfiore

Contact:

You can listen to Dr Belfiore and Prof. Bennett discussing the content of the book and its relevance for contemporary cultural policy debates in a podcast by clicking here

The paperback edition of The Social Impact of the Arts: An intellectual history was published by Palgrave in December 2010. In February 2011, it was reviewed for the Times Higher Education by Dr Chris Jones, senior lecturer in English at the University of St. Andrews, who defined the book as "superlative", commenting that "the book's compass and ambition is nothing short of humbling". You can read Dr Jones's full review here.