Situating Graffiti
Research Field J
Over the past twenty years, the study of graffiti has evolved into a booming field, attracting scholars from archaeology, art history, epigraphy, linguistics, social history, social anthropology, and other backgrounds. The advent of robust digital technologies for recording, storage, and publishing, combined with the ‘social turn’ in historical studies, has sparked global interest in graffiti – written artefacts once regarded merely as marginalia in the field of Roman epigraphy. Today, graffiti are recognised as a remarkable cultural phenomenon, widespread in many contemporary and past societies around the globe. However, while the number of studies highlighting the universality of graffiti across time and space is growing, a truly comparative synthesis of the topic remains elusive.
Between 2022 and 2025, ‘Situating Graffiti’ (Research Field J) brought together CSMC researchers who approached graffiti as a global phenomenon, exploring its cultural variables and constants and refining methodological principles to lay the groundwork for comparative and cross-cultural research that can enhance our understanding of the human propensity to leave written traces wherever they set foot. Our work was guided by two key principles: 1) historical and contemporary graffiti practices are inextricably linked and must be studied together; and 2) to fully understand graffiti practices, they must be situated not only in their historical contexts but also within a genuinely global perspective. Highlighting graffiti cultures from previously neglected or understudied regions formed a central part of our mission.
Our comprehensive approach to the study of graffiti is exemplified by our book Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding (De Gruyter, 2023). In addition to fourteen contributions spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, the volume features an introductory essay ‘Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding of Graffiti: Terminology, Context, Semiotics, Documentation’, which presents some of the key conceptual work by members of the research field.
We promoted our core principles through international academic events, including the co-organisation of the Hamburg edition of the conference ‘Tag: Name Writing in Public Space’ (2023) and the organisation of the roundtable discussion ‘Documenting Graffiti Past and Present: Disparate Traditions, Shared Objectives’ (2023), which brought together representatives of major databases dedicated to both ancient and contemporary graffiti. For a broader audience, we organised the hands-on workshop ‘The Calligraphy of Tagging’ (2024) with the leading tagging specialist Javier Abarca, which transformed the CSMC Pavilion for several weeks into an extravagant written artefact. Other publications and activities are listed below.
Over the years, we have benefited from collaboration with numerous scholars and practitioners, including the world’s leading graffiti artist DAIM and street art theorist – and director of the Tag Conference – Javier Abarca. We are especially proud to have participated in the project ‘Graffiti as a Catalyst for Sense of Place in Global Cities’ (2023–2024) led by Mohamed El-Barbary and Mariko Ikeda (University of Tsukuba), which won the ‘Tsukuba-Hamburg Networking Challenge Grant’. We also extend our sincere gratitude to Lucie Bartůňková (University of Pardubice), Rostislav Oreshko (CNRS), and Maya Stiller (University of Kansas) for joining our research field meetings as guest speakers.
Spokesperson: Ondrej Skrabal