About

LabCom is a Communication Sciences research unit whose main purpose is to develop advanced research on communication and new media technologies, especially those underlying online and digital processes, in order to assess their impact on everyday life and understand different kinds of communication phenomena on an individual, communitarian and societal basis.

LabCom research is based on two fundamental theoretical assumptions. The first is that communication and new media technologies are turning our society into a mediated one, in the sense that all social and cultural phenomena are progressively created in a media logic. The second is that there is a reciprocal relationship between communication and contemporary arts: as all mediated communication denotes a growing aesthetization, the theory, practice and reception of the arts implycommunication strategies.

These two assumptions justify the unit's organization in two research groups:

- Communication & Media, dealing with the multilevel and multiform impacts and effects of communication and new media technologies

- Arts Group, focused on the relationship between communication and new media technologies in the arts and in its specific interfaces, from fine arts to cinema and design.

The two groups reconcile work in their specific lines of research, with the strengthening of their interdisciplinary collaboration around common or cross-cutting objects, in the organization of scientific events and publications.

Direction Board

Anabela Gradim (Coordinator of LabCom.IFP)

José Ricardo Carvalheiro (Deputy Coordinator of LabCom)

Gisela Gonçalves (Coordinator of the Communication and Media Group)

Francisco Paiva (Coordinator of the Arts Group)

João Canavilhas (Internationalization Processes)

Mércia Pires (Secretary)