Passages of Culture is an interdisciplinary project aiming at a deeper understanding of the significance of media for the rapidly changing culture of African societies. It focuses on medial shifts and how they affect and inform the negotiation of culture. This is of particular importance to the rapidly transforming life-world of African societies, in particular in urban settings.

The methodological approach is based on case studies: From live performance to radio, CDs, Video and TV (South Africa), from theatre to film and TV (Cameroon), from live music to multiple media shifts in literary and visual culture (Nigeria), and from face-to-face to mediated interaction through the electronic media (Cameroon/Germany/Switzerland).

These passages of media are linked by four transversal themes that are at the centre of empirical inquiry:

• the changing modes of perception and the transformation of agency,
• the transformation of subjectivities and identities,
• the emergence of trans-national spaces and new public spheres,
• the question of national imaginations and the politics of belonging.