People
Find out more about the people that make up the Institute for Cultural Practices.
Departmental Statement
We, the staff of the Department of Art History and Cultural Practices at the University of Manchester, abhor racism and are committed to redressing the issues of discrimination and racialised disadvantage within our disciplines and our own teaching and research practice, and to decolonising our curriculum. We are determined to produce a departmental culture which welcomes and supports BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled students and staff, and where everyone is equally recognised and can flourish.
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Abigail Gilmore - Professor of Arts Management and Cultural Policy
Abigail established the MA Arts Management, Policy and Practice at University of Manchester and works with colleagues in the Institute on other taught and research programmes. Her background is in sociological research on cultural policy, beginning with a PhD in Popular Culture and Society at the University of Leicester. Her research now focuses on local cultural management, participation and the different forms of knowledge and evidence used to measure and understand cultural value.
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Dr Roaa Ali - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Roaa Ali is a Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries. She is an interdisciplinary researcher focusing on race and diversity in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs). Roaa researches, teaches and writes on issues of inequality, anti-racism, and the politics of cultural production CCIs. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Polycultural Institute (Chicago). Her monograph, The Cultural production of Otherness: Contemporary Arab American Drama is forthcoming in 2024.
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Dr Kostas Arvanitis - Senior Lecturer in Museology
Kostas has a MA and PhD in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester and a first degree in History and Archaeology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. His research interests cross the fields of museology, archaeology, cultural heritage, and digital media. His expertise lies in the area of Digital Heritage that includes the theory and practice of digital technology in museums, galleries and heritage sites.
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Dr Jenna Ashton - Senior Lecturer in Heritage Studies
Jenna is an experienced curator and producer, working in the areas of heritage, arts, participation, public space, social movements and activism. She is passionate about embedding inclusive practices and co-production methods in the arts and heritage sectors. She has an MA and PhD in Art History and Visual Studies from The University of Manchester. Jenna is also the Founder and Creative Director of Digital Women's Archive North – a Manchester-based feminist arts and heritage organisation addressing social inequalities through creative archiving and documentation.
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Dr Kenneth Atuma - Lecturer in Library and Archives Studies
Kenneth is a Knowledge and Information Management Specialist and Scholar. His area of specialization is Archives and Records Management and Information Governance. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow. Previously, he worked and held academic positions in two higher institutions in Nigeria. He is also interested in research around Computational Archiving; Digital Preservation, Information Storage and Retrieval Systems; AI in Libraries, and Health Librarianship.
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Ana Baeza Ruiz - Lecturer in Museology
Ana Baeza Ruiz’s research focuses on feminism, visual culture and museums, with an emphasis on contemporary participation and co-creation practices in public arts organisations, the role of social justice pedagogies, and histories of feminist art practices in the UK from the 1970s onwards. She has undertaken a fellowship at the Museo del Prado (Madrid), and her forthcoming monograph Modernisation and Democracy in the Twentieth-Century Art Museum in Britain: A Museum for Everyone?(Routledge) will be published in 2025. In 2023, she joined the BBC New Generation Thinkers Scheme.
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Danielle Child - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Dani has over a decade’s experience of researching creative labour. Through adopting an historical materialist approach, her work examines the relationship between art making, labour and capitalism (including social class). She has widely published (and spoken) on this subject, including her monograph Working Aesthetics: Labour, Art and Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2019) and The Routledge Companion to Art and Capitalism (editor, forthcoming).
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Dr James Fenwick - Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
James’s research focus is on the history and heritage of the cultural industries, including film, television, festivals, and film and media archives. He principally investigates the ways in which popular culture is archived and used in knowledge production and archival gaps and silences. He is the co-editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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Dr Andy Hardman - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Andrew has worked in the creative industries for over twenty years. His research explores the representation, theory and practice of creative production. During his PhD (in art history and visual cultures at Manchester) he formed a production company with two fellow researchers. Their filmmaking, for cultural organisations across the UK, specialises in archival research, documenting cultural practices, and co-producing film as a means of developing audiences and participation with collections and places.
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Dr Ryan Humphrey - Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy
Ryan is an Arts Management and Cultural Policy Lecturer, specialising in community arts and cultural policy. He holds a PhD and MA in community music from York St John University. As a practitioner, Ryan has experience managing and delivering community music programmes across various contexts and demographics. His research interests concern funding, cultural policy, cultural value, the role of community arts in the 21st century, working conditions of socially engaged and community artists, activism, social justice, and cultural democracy.
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Dr Emma Martin - Senior Lecturer in Museology and ICP Director
Emma has worked as a curator of ethnography and decorative arts for nearly 20 years, specialising in South Asia, the Himalaya and Tibet. She is leading a new research network called Object Lessons from Tibet and the Himalaya, which aims to bring researchers and museums from across Europe together with members of the Tibetan diaspora for the purpose of sharing and collaborating on Tibet and Himalaya collections-based research.
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Dave O'Brien- Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries
Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries. He has over a decade of research experience ranging across cultural policy, the sociology of culture, culture-led regeneration, and inequality in the creative economy. He is currently part of the AHRC funded Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, as well as researching social class and television production; the value of culture and heritage; creative higher education; and diversity, skills and the future of the creative workforce.
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Dr Simon Parry - Senior Lecturer in Drama and Arts Management
Simon has managed and evaluated a number of arts and education projects across the UK and Europe. He has a BA in Modern Languages (Nottingham), MA in Text and Performance Studies (King’s College London / Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), and a PhD in Drama (Royal Holloway University of London). His research interests include the arts in education, engagements between contemporary science and the arts, activist performance and approaches to arts evaluation.
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Dr Catherine Roberts - Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Catherine has a MA in English Literary Culture and a PhD in Tourism Studies from the University of Central Lancashire. A practitioner in regional and national museum learning programmes for over 15 years, Catherine has undertaken project consultancy for UK and European heritage and education projects. Her research interests and practice relate to experiential learning, placemaking and psychologised readings of visitor experience in dissonant/difficult heritage environments.
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Dr Priya Sharma - Lecturer in Cultural Industries
I am Lecturer in Arts Management, Policy and Practice and a current PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies department. My research explores articulations of feminist and queer British South Asian identity on social media platforms. I completed my Masters degree at Goldsmiths in Film and the Audio-visual and my undergraduate in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Liverpool.
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Dr Leandro Valiati - Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries
Leandro started his career in Brazil as a professor and policy advisor in Creative Industries and Economy of Culture, creating and leading the most representative policy-oriented academic centre on CCIs. In the past years, he has been working in academic positions and as board member in policy institutions in Spain, France and the UK. His research interests are Culture and Socioeconomic Development, Cultural Policy and Multidimensional Impact of Arts.
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Dr Benjamin Wiggins - Senior Lecturer of History and Library & Archive Studies
Benjamin Wiggins is Senior Lecturer of History and Library & Archive Studies. He is the author of Calculating Race: Racial Discrimination in Risk Assessment (2020) and History and Technology: Twenty-First Century Methods for Researching the Past (2023)—both published by Oxford University Press. He has been a PI on awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), and the National Science Foundation.
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Dr Biyun Zhu - Lecturer in Cultural Policy and Governance
Biyun has a PhD in Cultural Policy and Arts Management from The Ohio State University and a MA in Public Policy from King’s College London. Her research draws on knowledge from multiple disciplines including public policy, international relations, history, and management. She uses cultural policy as a lens to investigate issues in broader fields such as arts organisation governance, creative industries, cultural diplomacy, and soft power.
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Emeriti
Honorary professors
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Dr Maria Balshaw CBE – Director of Tate (formerly Director of the Whitworth, University of Manchester and Manchester City Galleries)
Maria succeeded Sir Nicholas Serota as Director of Tate in June 2017. Previously, as Director of The Whitworth and Manchester City Galleries, she was responsible for the artistic and strategic vision for each gallery. Maria was also Director of Culture for Manchester City Council. In 2014 Maria was appointed as a board member of Arts Council England and in June 2015 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to the arts.
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Sook-Kyung Lee - Director of the Whitworth Gallery and Honorary Professor of Transcultural Curating
Before joining Manchester as Director of the Whitworth and Professor, Sook-Kying Lee was Senior Curator of International Art at London’s Tate Modern. Since 2019 she has led the ‘Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational’, a major research initiative in partnership with Hyundai Motor, exploring new perspectives on global art histories. In 2021 she was also appointed Artistic Director of South Korea’s 14th Gwangju Biennale, which opened in April 2023.
Visit the Whitworth's website
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Dr Nick Merriman - Director of the Horniman Museum and Gardens
Nick was appointed Director of the Manchester Museum in March 2006. He has focused the Manchester Museum mission on promoting understanding between cultures and working towards a sustainable world and has overseen the refurbishment of most of the Museum’s permanent galleries. He led the Museum’s major capital project to build a new temporary exhibition space and a permanent gallery on South Asia in partnership with the British Museum. In 2018 Nick was appointed Director of the Horniman Museum and Gardens.
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Esme Ward - Director of The Manchester Museum and Honorary Professor of Heritage Futures
Esme was appointed Director of Manchester Museum in April 2018 and is the first woman to hold that position in its 127-year history. Prior to this, she was Head of Learning and Engagement at Manchester Museum and the Whitworth. She holds an MA in French Revolutionary Culture and Theory. In 2016-17 she was a Fellow on the Clore Cultural Leadership programme. Esme is the Strategic Lead (culture) for Age-Friendly Manchester and the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub. She is co-curator of the Arts, Health and Social change programme the World Health Congress 2019-20.
View Esme's profile on the Manchester Museum website
Honorary Research Fellows
Affiliate Researchers
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Dr Sophie Everest, Lecturer in Documentary Film Making
Sophie is Lecturer in Film Practice in the Drama Department and Co-Director of Belle Vue, a film production and creative research company. Sophie started her career in television production at the BBC. Her practice uses film as a tool to capture and initiate relationships between people, objects and cultural practice within museums, archives and heritage spaces. Underpinning her research is a commitment to film as a socially engaged practice that invites collaboration and co-creation.
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Helen Mark
Helen is responsible for audience research at Manchester Museums Partnership, comprising the Whitworth, Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Museum. Helen leads on the collection and analysis of public engagement research data and co-ordinates research partnerships with HEIs and other bodies. Research interests include: inequalities and cultural participation; the civic role of museums; open data on cultural participation; and ‘data practice’ as an emergent area of arts management professional practice.
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Dr Liz Thomas
Liz has a BA in Heritage Studies, an MA in Archaeology and a PhD in Historical Archaeology and has recently completed her British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship on the subject of ‘Sailortown’, a docklands area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Liz has successfully led numerous community driven projects and is a founding member of Buildings in Society International (BISI). Her research interests include, heritage, contested spaces, oral histories, institutions, identity and memory.
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