文化研究结合了社会学、文学理论、媒体研究与文化人类学来研究工业社会中的文化现象。文化研究者时常关注某个现象是如何与意识形态、种族、社会阶级或性别等议题产生关连。

1956年，英国学者雷蒙‧威廉斯 ( Raymond Williams )和李察‧霍加特 ( Richard Hoggart )对于当时英国文学研究中的「大叙事」不满，认为文学不仅是为了受过高等教育的白人，而是更应该接近劳工阶级。因为中下阶层的大众更喜欢通俗文化，所以后来的「文化研究」也逐渐以通俗文化 ( Popular Culture )为主要研究范围，故此威廉士和霍加特于1964年成立了著名的「伯明罕当代文化研究中心」，「伯明罕学派」 (Birmingham School) 之名也不胫而走。

Cultural studies is a field of theoretically, politically, and empirically engaged cultural analysis that was initially developed by British academics in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and has been subsequently taken up and transformed by scholars from many different disciplines around the world. Cultural studies is avowedly and even radically interdisciplinary and can sometimes be seen as antidisciplinary. As cultural studies scholar Toby Miller has written, "cultural studies is a tendency across disciplines, rather than a discipline itself." Although most practitioners of cultural studies are professional academics, Gilbert Rodman has argued in his 2015 book, Why Cultural Studies?, that the field must be understood to include some non-academic cultural analysts and practitioners as well as academic ones.