About us

The UNESCO Chair in Digital Culture and Arts in Education is an Institution of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Together with the Canadian UNESCO Chair in Arts & Learning and a growing community of upcoming UNESCO Chairs, we are proud to serve as a dedicated chair to fostering UNESCO-related issues and perspectives on aesthetic, arts, and cultural education in a global perspective.

The Erlangen UNESCO-Chair was established in 2010 and has ever since been particularly involved in national and international research in the field of cultural education. In 2019, Prof. Dr. Benjamin Jörissen succeeded Prof. Dr. Eckart Liebau as chair holder, who had held the chair since its inception.

As a Chair we aim to achieve and work towards two main strategic goals:

1. Deepen the research approach on the issue of “aesthetic education” within the scope of the broader field of arts education (respectively cultural education) oriented towards the Sustainable Development Goals, while at the same time
2. fostering global research dialogues and collaborations to contribute to the enhancement of quality arts education research worldwide.

The basis for achieving these goals is an intensive collaboration with other scientists in international networks, like the UNESCO UNITWIN “Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development” and the European Network of Observatories in the Field of Arts and Cultural Education (ENO), who offer an open and quality-oriented global research context.

The Chair operates the Nuremberg Academy of Digital Culture and Performative Education and publishes the international open-access journal “International Journal for Research in Cultural, Aesthetic, and Arts Education” (IJRCAAE, Waxmann).

The UNESCO Chair at a glance

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