Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research is a new journal for border-crossing cultural research, globally open to articles from all areas in this large field, including cultural studies as well as other interdisciplinary and transnational currents for exploring cultural perspectives, issues and phenomena. It is peer-reviewed and easily accessible for downloading as open access.  The journal seeks to be a forum for contemporary, cutting edge cultural research from a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas.

Culture Unbound is hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press. It is based on a co-operation between three Linköping University units that provide a unique profile to the journal, bridging regional and global research traditions:

• The Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS), with interdisciplinary transnational exchange.
• The Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q), with interdisciplinary research and PhD education.
• The Swedish Cultural Policy Research Observatory (SweCult), interface for cultural research and the cultural sector.

The first thematic section entitled “What´s the Use of Cultural Research?”  was published in June 2009. Here are some of the articles included in this edition:

• “Convergence, Creative Industries and Civil Society Towards a New Agenda for Cultural Policy and Cultural Studies”, by Colin Mercer (relating the concept of civil society and creative industries to the development of cultural research and cultural policy);
• “Digital Media and the Order of Ethnography”, by Andreas Henriksson (applying the Actor-Network Theory approach to the Swedish Museum of World Culture’s attempts to renew old ethnographic objects through the use of digital media);
• “Cultural Research and Intangible Heritage” by Sheenagh Pietrobruno (anaysing how the reproduction of old Caribbean dances on internet communities challenges the traditional definitions of intangible heritage).

The next section “Signs of the City /City of Signs”, edited by Geoff Stahl, will be released later this fall.