The journal Studi Culturali was founded in 2004, with the aim of satisfying a growing demand for research on cultures and on the complex forms of their production, circulation, organization, and appropriation in the contemporary world. The journal title does not reflect any rigid disciplinary affiliation, but rather suggests the constitution of an ever shifting space for intellectual exchanges among different disciplinary traditions: a laboratory of collective reflection on culture in its different expressions, attentive to its spatial and temporal contexts, and able to question its very foundations. Studi Culturali is committed to both empirical and theoretical enquiries, with a particular emphasis on experimenting with new methodologies and reworking the legacy of classic social sciences. The subject areas the journal focuses on are multiple, from the arts, media, consumption, advertisement, lifestyle, sport, subcultures, rituals, science and religion as well as issues of gender, ethnic differences, social control, citizenship, multiculturalism and postcolonialism. Its specificity lies in adopting a perspective which brings out their cultural and political relevance. The journal features original articles from contemporary scholars and "classic" texts prefaced to bring out their everlasting relevance, debates and interviews, shorter comments on methodological issues and the analysis of a variety of empirical sources from visual archives to websites. It also features a rich section of book reviews aimed at offering Italian readers a selection of the most important works published on cultural issues in Italy and elsewhere.