Louise Ejgod Hansen’s research while affiliated with Aarhus University and other places

This thematic issue of the Nordic Journal of Cultural Policy has come about on the initiative of participants of the research project Political Dynamics of the Cultural Sector (POLY-CUL), which is carried out by cultural policy researchers from Norway, Sweden and Fin-land, with funding from the Research Council of Norway. POLYCUL departs from the observation that cultural policy research in the Nordic countries and elsewhere has been geared mainly toward the study of the institutional build-up and structure of cultural policy and the study of the formulation and implementation of official policy goals and objectives in this domain of public policy. Less attention has been paid to the, often informal, political processes involved in the formation of cultural policy and to the power-and interest struggles that actors from the cultural sector engage in. As is indicated by the project name, POLYCUL aims to push the research agenda of cultural policy research one step further through a range of case studies that focus on power-and interest struggles that come at play in connection with cultural policy, the forms of political processes that arises from this and how these processes shape policy development in various segments of the cultural sector over time. If we are correct in assuming that such a shift of focus can be a productive contribution to cultural policy research, this begs the question of where cultural policy researchers should look for their objects of study.