Research

The Institute for Culture and Thought promotes interdisciplinary humanistic research at UIC Barcelona. Based on the notion that there are elements of anthropology and ethics implicit to all academic disciplines, the CIP contributes a unique philosophical perspective to the research groups in which it is involved.

Lines of research:

• Person-centred purpose

This line of research is focused on researching “purpose” (the why), both corporate purpose and personal purpose and the connection between them.

The aim is to use and build on research conducted by the Ethics of Economics and Business Research Group and the Chair in Management by Missions and Corporate Purpose, which have developed different models for analysing purpose and methods for measuring its degree of implementation in organisations.

Within the context of the CIP, the focus is on purpose in the ethical sense and its connection to personal development, based on the hypothesis that a person-centred purpose has three components: as the “purpose of” the person (flourishing), as a “purpose with” people (community) and as a “purpose for” people (accountability).

It also seeks to gauge the impact that implementing a person-centred purpose has on organisations.

Coordinator: Miquel Bastons Prat

Chair in Management by Missions and Corporate Purpose

• WeCare Chair - Institute for Culture and Thought

The end of life is a privileged scenario with which to reflect on fundamental aspects of human existence. Concepts such as dignity, compassion, autonomy, sense and hope are present in the clinical discourse offered in palliative care, but only when addressed in all their complexity are they capable of raising questions about what it means to be a person, the care (bond) people deserve and what the human condition says about suffering and death.

The objective of this line of research is to consolidate and build upon the research conducted by the End of Life Care Research Group (WeCare Chair), whose primary mission is to contribute to research aimed at easing patients’ suffering and meeting the needs of both patients and their family members in the context of advanced illness.

The CIP looks to contribute a humanistic perspective (mainly from the point of view of philosophical anthropology and ethics) to extreme human situations and offer an epistemological philosophical framework for palliative care, while also providing a clinical response to the needs of people, family members and professionals currently dealing with end of life contexts.

Coordinator: Andrea Rodríguez Prat

WeCare: End of Life Care Chair