A product designer working on ideas in a lab in Geoffrey Manton

Our research mission to champion creative excellence

Creating a viable future recognising, understanding and celebrating cultural, social and material diversity harnessing technological and virtual transformations to support a breadth of cultural and creative practice.

About our research mission

We are leaders in cultural and creative research and innovation.

Our work has real-world impact, including supporting communities facing health challenges, driving material-related innovations, widening audiences for poetry, and enabling new forms of writing and creativity.

We are publicly engaged, collaborative, interdisciplinary and challenge-led. Our work takes critical, applied and practice-based approaches.

Our research attracts significant external funding, enabling collaborative projects, practice-based initiatives and high-profile exhibitions and outputs. We regularly work with academic, education, business and third-sector partners in the UK and internationally.

Among the themes our research embraces are:

  • the challenges of cultural heritage, histories and social inclusion
  • the sustainability and regeneration of our environments
  • digital, virtual and analogue futures
  • wellbeing and quality of life across the human lifespan
  • the ethics of power, politics and protest

Our high-level creative practice and research come together to produce world-leading results.

In the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021, Art and Design and English were among the national top 10 for research power.

In Art and Design, English and History, we received 100% internationally excellent and world-leading environment scores.

Being confident to take brave, creative decisions is the key to impactful research. Because they reach across divides and inspire this confidence, the humanities and creative industries have unique contributions to make in addressing real-world social, economic, and environmental issues
Chloe Germaine
Reader
Being confident to take brave, creative decisions is the key to impactful research. Because they reach across divides and inspire this confidence, the humanities and creative industries have unique contributions to make in addressing real-world social, economic, and environmental issues
Chloe Germaine
Reader

Featured research projects

  • A greetings card showing 3 figures stitching a flag that's half Union Jack and half a red banner saying 'A merry Christmas and a happy new year'. The text underneath the image reads 'A stich in time saves nine'.

    Celebrations: Victorian and Edwardian Greeting Cards

    Digitising a collection of nineteenth-century greeting cards to make them more accessible to the public and for academic study.

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  • MMU Logo

    Untold stories of the NHS

    A research project exploring the stories and experiences of staff in a range of roles working within Trafford General Hospital, the first NHS hospital to be opened.

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  • A mountain landscape with blue sky, green hills and a lonely-looking hut in the foreground.

    What is place writing now?

    A series of major events in which leading artists from around the world discussed their creative and critical approaches to writing place now.

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  • Three people sat on a bench with palms trees on each side, on a beach looking out to a cloudy sky and sea.

    PLACE 2020 and PLACE 2021

    Creating two digital anthologies that feature views from artists around the world on what place means now.

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Our design-led interdisciplinary research brings together community, government, housing, health, and infrastructure organisations to understand and create city neighbourhoods which support longer, healthier lives.
Stefan White
Professor of Architecture
Our design-led interdisciplinary research brings together community, government, housing, health, and infrastructure organisations to understand and create city neighbourhoods which support longer, healthier lives.
Stefan White
Professor of Architecture

Research groups

  • A student writing in a notebook

    Poetry

    An area of international excellence that focuses on modern and contemporary poetry.

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  • A dark window lit by melting candles.

    Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies

    Studying the history and cultural significance of the Gothic aesthetic, from its eighteenth-century British origins through to its contemporary global manifestations.

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  • A marshy landscape under a clear blue sky.

    Centre for Place Writing

    Exploring the relationship between writing and place to examine major contemporary issues including the climate emergency, urban regeneration and mass migration.

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  • Simpson, E and White B. (2013) PLAYHEAD: A Parallel Anthology.

    Art and Archive Futures

    Bridging the gap between historic archiving and the digital archives of the future.

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  • text on scaffold

    Design for Health and Wellbeing

    Applying design and craft practices to improve both mental and physical wellbeing and health.

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  • Image showing a map, compass, book and coins, all are yellowed or look old

    Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies (MAPS)

    Exploring the impact of postcolonialism and migration on the literary and cultural landscape — now and in the future.

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  • A screen studies seminar where a professor is standing in front of a group of students who are sat around her

    Screen Studies Network

    A vibrant research community dedicated to screen-based disciplines including film studies, media studies and screenwriting

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  • Black and white photograph of the Manchester School of Art building

    The Long Nineteenth-Century Network

    Looking back at nineteenth-century literature, culture and art to help us understand our present and future in Manchester and beyond.

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  • A ink illustration of the Corn Exchange in Manchester in its early years

    Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage

    Helping individuals and communities make new connections with their history and heritage.

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  • Gay rights demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London in 1972

    Histories of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Identity

    Exploring cultures of race, gender, sexuality and identity.

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  • Close-up of Frederick Hart's statue The Three Soldiers in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC

    Histories and Cultures of Conflict

    Reshaping our understanding of the relationship between war, conflict and society.

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  • Sutapa Biswas, Lumen, 2021. Production Still

    Art and Performance

    Embracing, interrogating and responding to contemporary and historical issues through art and performance research.

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  • close up of thread bearing witness

    Design

    Taking a challenge-led, engaged and collaborative approach to social, material and technological innovation in design.

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  • asian cultures art work

    Asian Cultures Group

    Using art to connect with Asian cultures and communities across Manchester and the rest of the world.

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  • The Second Line

    Making and Materiality

    Promoting creativity and innovation in design research and practice through the study of making and materials, including the production, use and reuse of materials.

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  • memory and matter header image

    Memory and Matter

    Re-examining the past using contemporary context through visual art, performance art and art research.

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  • Black Rivers image

    Performance Research Group

    Influencing creative developments, public policy and broader culture through impactful performance research.

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  • Elizabeth Magill Headland 2018

    The Curating Contemporary Art Group (CCAG)

    Practical and innovative approaches to researching and understanding the curation of contemporary art.

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  • Desert Generation exhibition Holden 2008

    Visual culture

    Responding to a wide range of visual media and visual practices through a critical, historical and theoretical lens.

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Our work is helping to modernise the UK fashion industry to become world leading with novel agile technologies. Reshoring production for zero carbon manufacturing of high value, low volume fashion.
Susan Postlethwaite
Professor of Fashion Technologies
Our work is helping to modernise the UK fashion industry to become world leading with novel agile technologies. Reshoring production for zero carbon manufacturing of high value, low volume fashion.
Susan Postlethwaite
Professor of Fashion Technologies