Planetary Collegium

The Planetary Collegium is an international platform for research in art, technology and consciousness, with its hub based in the University of Plymouth, and nodes in Kefalonia, Milan, and Zurich. In 2011, it received the World Universities Forum Award for Best Practice in Higher Education. It was first established as the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) in Wales in 1994, by Roy Ascott, who moved it to Plymouth University in 2003, reconstituted as the Planetary Collegium. With a widely dispersed membership, and regular research sessions and conferences throughout Europe, North and South America, Australia, China, and Japan, it constitutes a worldwide research community of artists, musicians, performers, designers, architects, theorists and scholars. It aims to produce new knowledge in the context of the arts, through transdisciplinary inquiry and critical discourse, with special reference to technoetic research and to advances in science and technology. Its seeks to reflect the social, technological and spiritual aspirations of an emerging planetary society, while sustaining a critical awareness of the retrograde forces and fields that inhibit social and cultural development. It combines the face-to-face association of individuals with the trans-cultural unity of telematic communities, thereby developing a network of research nodes strategically located across the planet, each with a distinctive cultural ethos. The Collegium seeks outcomes that involve new language, systems, structures, and behaviours, and insights into the nature of mind, matter and human identity. Some fifty doctorates have been awarded, and its graduates are internationally recognised as occupying leading positions in their field. [email protected]