Research Centre for Applied Social Sciences
Rethinking the world, its constructs and our place within it to help create fairer, safer, more prosperous societies.
About us
Our research challenges how we think about the world and our place within it.
We examine some of the most pressing issues facing modern society — promoting understanding, encouraging debate and ensuring people can have their views and experiences heard.
Our work ranges from advising how to shape policies to promote better outcomes for young people to highlighting discriminatory processes in the criminal justice system. We also examine the changing state of global politics, and challenge long-held beliefs on gender, class and sexuality.
The research we do is made to change the world. We aim to shape policy locally, nationally and globally. And we actively share our work, supporting the campaigners who use our research to fight for fairer, safer, more prosperous and culturally-reflective societies.
Our research is led by a multi-disciplinary team of sociologists, criminologists, human geographers and experts in social policy, politics and languages. We work together to pursue a vision for social justice and wellbeing, taking a sociological approach to exploring key issues in intersectional inequalities, discrimination, policy and social trends.
This cross-disciplinary approach gives us the skills, knowledge and authority to tackle complex and longstanding problems. By using innovative research methods — from analysis of big data sets and economic modelling to co-production and the use of sport and film to involve hard-to-reach groups — we help policymakers and practitioners transform people’s lives.
We have built global networks and partnerships with governments, charities, campaign groups and academic institutions to further our reach, understanding and impact.
Our research community is well established and growing, with more than 80 members. We’re the only modern university with a Q-Step Centre, making us a national leader in numeracy and data literacy research.
We welcome discussions with students and early careers researchers about opportunities to study with us.
Testimonial
Testimonial from the Youth Endowment Fund
The Youth Endowment Fund’s mission is to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. We do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice. As one of our evaluators, Manchester Met plays an important role. They’ve been working closely with us to robustly evaluate the implementation and impact of several of our funded interventions, using methodologies ranging from early phase feasibility studies to pilot RCTs. They’ve built trusted relationships with our grantees and take a proactive role in building their knowledge of evaluation and guiding them through the process. They’ve also been a great help to improve our own internal processes, providing valuable feedback on our resources and helping us to be as rigorous and transparent in our research and commissioning as possible.
Our structure
Organisations we work with
European Commission
Nuffield Foundation
Leverhulme Trust
Comic Relief
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Research groups
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Research projects
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Study with us
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News and events
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Contact us
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