CETAC.media was created on 2002 with his former designation - CETAC.COM- witch gathered and aimed at widening the interconnection between the Faculties of Arts and Humanities, Engineering, and Economy, already integrated in the graduation in Communication Sciences of Porto University with the objective of exploring basic applications at the intersection of computation the arts the humanities and the social sciences.
In 2004, the centre integrated a researchers' group from the area of Information Science, extending his interdisciplinary vocation, but maintaing its focus on the basic aspects of the technological mediation. This perspective was further reinforced, in June of 2007, when a large group of researchers from the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro were integrated in the centre. The consolidation of this vision led to a change of the name of the centre to CETAC.media and consequently a reorganization of his structure and a review of its Regulation.
As a research centre, recognized by the FCT, the CETAC.media has an organisational structure in two poles - one in Porto and another in Aveiro -, designed to draw people together from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines, and to offer them an environment where they can find substantial freedom to work together and develop interdisciplinary teams that can explore new frontiers for the relations between technology/communication/society at the points where many background, interests and disciplines collide.
CETAC.media gathers highly qualified and experienced researchers that, after carrying out research activities in other fields or at other research centres, have chosen to focus their investigations in the development of new fields for the interconnection between technologies, arts and social sciences and communication.
Objectives:
- Contribute to the development of scientific research bt carrying out
research projects, collective or individual, and provide a space for
dialoque and development of projects between researchersin engineering,
social sciences and communication and arts, in order to establish a
common field that allows to transcend the usual difficulties between
technological and non technological areas;
- Continuously develop fundamental scientific research, both applied and experimental in the areas of Communication Sciences, Social and Human Sciences, Audiovisual and New Technologies, both at inter- and trans-disciplinary levels;
- Contribute to the improvement of scientific communication from Porto and Aveiro Universities to the community;
- Support advanced pos-graduation (PhDs., M.Phils. and other pos-graduation training courses);
- Stimulate the development of national and international networks for scientific and technological cooperation between researchers, universities, research centres and other private organisations, specifically operating in the media area;
- Contribute to the dissemination of research results, by the publication of a periodical, as well as production of contents for the media (print, documentary, multimedia and electronic).