Research
How we support research at Manchester Met and beyond
Overview
Facilitating research into our collections and archives is an ongoing and vital part of what we do. It reveals the hidden stories in the material we hold and demonstrates the continued relevance of our collections and archives in contemporary life. We’re committed to developing opportunities for innovative and engaging research and to supporting academic and professional research to create impactful research outcomes.
Drawing on the specialist knowledge and experience held within our team, we’re happy to support research enquiries at all levels, from undergraduates to Professors and local historians to Head Curators. We work with postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers in many ways: as advisors, as professional partners in collaborative doctoral awards, and as supervisors for MRes and PhD candidates where our professional or subject specialism is required. We have also been co-investigators in research funding bids and can offer our museum and archive expertise in areas such as public engagement to create more meaningful impact for projects.
Whether you need to find material relating your PhD, help to get started with your essay research or you’re working on an international exhibition, contact us to see how we can support your research journey.
Recent and Current Research
Celebrations: Victorian and Edwardian Greetings Cards was a year-long project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Public Engagement Awards. The project aimed to widen public access and understanding of 19th-century greetings cards, using our Laura Seddon Collection, through digitisation and enhanced classification and cataloging using the results of research gleaned from creative workshops with different audience groups.
Project partners included Elizabeth Gaskell House, the Death Café Chorlton, Manchester Poetry Library, and the Portico Library. More than 4,400 people participated in the project including children in formal education, young people and older people, and over 1,000 digital images of the Collection were created.
Image—Victorian mourning card from the Laura Seddon Collection.
Bethany Turner-Pemberton is a current PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University, working on an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded studentship with the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership. Bethany’s research explores textile innovation within the Greater Manchester region, focusing on the ways in which these innovations are presented to the public in a museum and gallery context.
Bethany curated Collecting Innovation: Innovative Collecting, a small exhibition in one of our gallery spaces that drew on work held in the Material and Process Innovation Collection. She also used this collection to facilitate a workshop with academic staff that explored the opportunities and challenges presented by collecting work of this nature.
This PhD is a collaboration with the Manchester School of Art Research Centre, the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, the University of Manchester’s Department of Materials and the Special Collections Museum at Manchester Met.
Photograph—© Bethany Turner-Pemberton.
The Barnett Freedman Archive formed the basis of a major exhibition at Pallant House, Chichester, which reappraised the career of Freedman, one of Britain’s most sought-after commercial designers of the mid-20th century.
Scrap albums and Valentines cards from the Sir Harry Page Collection and Laura Seddon Collection were included in Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition was the first survey exhibition on collage to take place anywhere in the world and the resulting publication is available in Manchester Met’s Library.
Image—detail from a scrapbook by Mary Watson included in Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage.
The Manchester School of Art Archive and Manchester School of Art Collection are regularly used in research for publications and exhibitions. Recent examples include:
- Edward Burne-Jones at Tate Britain, London, which featured our tapestry, The Adoration of the Magi
- William Morris by Anna Mason (ed.), 2021, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum/Thames and Hudson
- The Victorian Art School: Architecture, History, Environment by Ranald Lawrence, 2020, published by Routledge
Image—The Adoration of the Magi tapestry, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in 1890 and made by Morris & Co in 1894
The Material and Process Innovation Collection has been used as part of a case study for a chapter on the challenges of 3D printed material and data as future heritage material by Mark Beecroft in the forthcoming book, Conservation Science: Heritage Materials, 2021, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Architects from Purcell came to look at plans held in the Thomas Worthington and Sons Archive to inform their work in restoring Manchester’s Albert Memorial and its surrounds, which form part of the larger renovation of Manchester Town Hall and Albert Square.
Image—detail from a plan for the Albert Memorial, Manchester, by Thomas Worthington, 1865
