Mission of the Centre

The Centre for Research on Culture, Language, and Mind (Centre Q) serves as a university-wide research platform established within the University of Warsaw’s “Excellence Initiative – Research University” program. It operates from the premise that contemporary challenges — both global and local — require humanistic inquiry to shape scientific and technological development from its foundational stages, rather than merely responding to completed outcomes.

The mission focuses on positioning humanities research as a domain that, while maintaining the full autonomy of its research area, informs the assumptions, shapes priorities, and improves methodologies and practices guiding interdisciplinary collaboration with social sciences, STEM fields, and medicine from the earliest phases of inquiry.

This mission reflects a fundamental understanding that robust scholarly response to pressing societal challenges emerges when humanistic methods — with focus on meaning-making, ethical reasoning, and considering relational interpretive frameworks — become integral to research design rather than supplementary commentary.

Centre Q’s task is therefore to embed interdisciplinary scientific research conducted at the University of Warsaw within the broad context of humanistic issues related to the concepts of culture, human being, power, identity, justice, or meaning, as well as within the specific, deepened temporal consciousness brought by humanistic inquiry: understanding the sources of contemporaneity (cultural preservation, colonial legacies); actively positioning ourselves regarding the most complex issues of the present (ethical, social, and scientific challenges related to the development of artificial intelligence, democratic crisis, global inequality, intersectional discrimination and exclusions); imagining a responsible future (climate adaptation, shaping identity, technological development, crisis management and prevention, peace studies, economic justice).

Centre Q will serve to support and develop humanities research by supporting advanced research initiatives that integrate humanistic knowledge as a constitutive element of social responsibility and increasing the role of science in the development of a knowledge-based society, through such instruments as:

Interdisciplinary research competitions: Internal grants will stimulate ambitious interdisciplinary humanities-led research. Calls will be designated for pioneering projects spanning at least two fields conducted by multidisciplinary, preferably international teams.
Academic forums and knowledge exchange: Regular interdisciplinary seminars, lectures, and workshops fostering dialogue between humanities researchers and other fields.
Visiting scholars program: Funding for international visiting scholars and partnerships with leading research centres worldwide to strengthen Polish humanities’ international position and expand expertise.
Comprehensive grant support: Strategic guidance and expert assistance for grant preparation and management, including specialized science managers, proposal optimization, progress monitoring, and support throughout project lifecycles, as well as support in optimized research management and sustainable administrative processes.
Research support offices development and support: Training and knowledge sharing platform for research support specialists from humanities and social sciences departments.
Science communication and public engagement: Strategic dissemination of research through support for organizing conferences, networking activities, media collaboration, and public outreach initiatives.