Faculty research themes
- Chinese Studies
- Poverty, Inequality, Development and Globalisation
- Governance
- Innovation, Science and Society
- Culture, Identity and Change
- Humanitarian & Conflict Response
New thematic areas of strategic investment include:
- Ageing
- Research Methods
- Fairness at Work
- Cities
Chinese Studies
The Centre for Chinese Studies was established in 2004 with a £2 million investment from the university, and is headed by Professor Hong Liu, who joined Manchester from the National University of Singapore.
Together with its counterparts at the Universities of Oxford and Bristol, the centre was recently awarded a major five-year research grant from the ESRC/AHRC/HEFCE to set up the British Inter-University China Centre (BICC).
Poverty, Inequality, Development and Globalisation
Key centres of expertise in the study of poverty, poverty reduction, inequality and growth are:
- Brooks World Poverty Institute
- The Global Poverty Research Group (GPRG)
- Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC)
Governance
The institutions, relationships and values through which society organises itself are central issues in the study of governance. Focusing on the ways in which business, community and other collective actions are governed, several major cross-school projects have been established to capitalise on the faculty's research expertise in this field:
- Institute for Political and Economic Governance and the Centre for Regional Economics (IPEG)
- Manchester-Harvard Initiative on Social Change (ISC)
- Political economy Institute
Innovation, Science and Society
The successful exploitation of new ideas through innovation is one of the most potent means for transforming society and economy. Key capabilities include: the study of innovation in the service sector, particularly in public services; corporate R&D management and relations with the science base; technology foresight and evaluation; distributed organisations and their implications for IT infrastructure and management; and the legal and ethical implications of advances in medical and life sciences.
Culture, Identity and Change
Projects under this theme examine issues of social cohesion, and social disengagement and fragmentation. The Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) is the first major research centre in the UK to develop a broad, empirically focused account of cultural change and its economic, social and political implications.
The Faculty has established a Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures in the Humanities. The mission is to create a major research cluster in the theoretically-informed empirical research on contemporary cosmopolitanism, drawing upon existing expertise and focusing on the themes of Cosmopolitan Cultures, Media and Transnationalism, and Migration and Diaspora.
Humanitarianism & Conflict Response (HCRI)
Established in 2009, HCRI researches and provides postgraduate training on the impact and outcomes of contemporary and historical crises, and is a partnership between the Medical and Human Sciences, and Humanities Faculties at the University of Manchester.