CRESC Seminar

What is it to know? And to know materially? What is it to know materials that we think of as mute? Or animal? This day seminar will explore these questions, with distinguished speakers  including Penny Harvey, James Leach and Hugh Raffles.

In a world of radical political, economic and ecological uncertainty, lives and life chances are increasingly precarious for many. It is becoming ever more urgent to explore the changing vulnerabilities of the majority. At the same time, understanding the in/vulnerabilities of elites and their sometimes inadequate forms of expertise and knowledge is also crucial. These are the two central themes of the CRESC 2013 Conference, which is co-sponsored by the Journal for Cultural Economy. 

This is the third of five events sponsored by the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) on qualitative longitudinal research. Speakers at this event in include Andrew Abbott, Julie Macleod, Eleanor Casella, Michelle Bastian, Mike Savage, Liz Stanley, Niamh Moore, Stuart Muir, Andy Miles Alan Warde and Dave Watling. Please note that the main seminar is on March 18th. March 19th is reserved for early career researchers.

The author will present his book that explores the locus of powers, authorities an responsibilities of the global sphere. This event is an excellent opportunity to discuss the contemporary features of the global economy.

For additional information about the CRESC Seminar and to reserve a place please contact 

This workshop will interrogate the ethical conundrums of setting the price of water in a contemporary policy making context that is both orientated towards private-public partnerships and recognizes water as a ‘human right’.

Eurel Conference 2012, Religion and Territory - 25 & 26th October

The EPSRC funded STEPCHANGE (Sustainable Transport Evidence and modelling Paradigms: Cohort Household Analysis to support New Goals in Engineering design) project will hold a workshop on its survey work

The seminar brings together two anthropologists and photographers in discussion about photography and the postcolonial: Chris Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture, UCL and Patricia Spyer, Professor and Chair, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Contemporary Indonesia, Leiden University and Mark Sealy, Director, Autograph. Seminar to be followed by a reception from 17:00 - 18:00.  Registration is free but to secure your place please send an email to Bussie Awosanya (Olubusola.Awosanya@manchester.ac.uk).

'Powers of the Hoard: Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter'
Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins University

This workshop brings together photographers and social scientists to explore the challenges they face, and the techniques they are developing to overcome the problems associated with the practice of describing change.

BBC Arabic’s flagship tri-platform programme Nuqtat Hewar (Talking Point) has been in the vanguard of using social media. How do its producers engage users and manage social media? How can social media monitoring data support best practice in using social media? In this seminar, Nesrine Abdel Sattar, Nermeen Sayed and Mina Al Lami will provide insight into best practice in social media from the perspective of users and producers, and will assess the quality and scope of how users interact online.

The aim of this workshop is to bring a critical discussion of affect into debate with an anthropology of the state as a way of working towards a more coherent, ethnographically sensitive and fine-grained approach to the role of affect in political life.

Impact is now a buzz word driving decision-making in many public service institutions - not just the BBC. But what is impact? How are we to understand this multi-faceted term and how useful is it at the BBC World Service? Dr Hugh Mackay will present findings from his research placement at BBC Global News Marketing & Audiences, and will invite you to take partin the discussion

An afternoon workshop which explores the potential of Geographical Information Systems technology in the analysis of ethnic segregation, with input fron leading scholars in the field including Angela Dale (CCSR, Manchester), Martin Dodge (Geography, Manchester), Ian Gregory (Digital Humanities, Lancaster) and Ludi Simpson (CCSR, Manchester).  Please reserve a place with CRESC Secretary Bussie Awosanya (Olubusola.Awosanya@manchester.ac.uk).  Places are limited.

Gemma John will talk about The Flexible Person: Transparency and the Making and Unmaking of Bureaucracy

This workshop explores the phenomenon of military multiculturalism in different national contexts.

An open meeting of the Transition Research Network, bringing together academics and activists interested in community-led responses to climate change and resource depletion.

'Winds of Desire: Energopolitics and Renewable Power in Southern Mexico',
Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe, Rice University

Join CRESC for a gallery visit to the Dark Matters exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Registration now closed

Stewart Muir will be leading a seminar on on ''Healing the nation: Utopianism, Culture, and Aboriginal reconciliation." All welcome!

An online conference bringing together researchers in the US and UK who work on the material culture of the book and publishing.

The CRESC annual conference 2011 takes the rubric of 'framing' to scrutinise the processes by which the city has been  conceptualised, conceived , ordered and depicted - and how these processes have been disrupted and contested - in regard to the meta-themes of: the material, ecologies and environments, publics & politics, economies, the visual, and affect.

This interdisciplinary CRESC workshop brings together researchers across the social sciences and humanities to ask how we might explain the robustness of this form of social identification in the face of the economic and political changes outlined above and what this implies for policy narratives like ‘the Big Society? In particular, what role does the spatialisation of inequality play in understanding class formation, fragmentation and relations; in the construction of social identities and the articulation of belonging; in the experience and memory of displacement and de-industrialisation and in the potential for a renewed class-based politics?

Penny Harvey and Evelyn Ruppert will be speaking at a workshop organised by methods@manchester on 'Research methods and social responsibility'.

A networking meeting for those conducting research reviews and scoping studies as part of the Connected Communities research programme.

Our monthly informal CRESC OU lunchtime meeting. Everyone is welcome - please bring your own lunch.

Michelle Bastian will be leading a seminar on on 'Fatally Confused about Time: Climate Change and Non-Performativity'. All welcome!

Second drawing seminar.  

This course is for people who have prior experience of doing mixed methods research and would like some training and guidance. The course will focus particularly on doing mixed methods research with longitudinal survey data. 

A round table debate at the House of Commons organised by the New Political Economy Network in association with CRESC.

This conference is on borders and the ways in which they shift. It will explore whether this displacement a characteristic of borders as such, and consider the making and remaking of borders, both literally and metaphorically.

This conference will celebrate the 15-year career of Mike Savage as Professor of Sociology at Manchester University. The conference programme includes invited papers from friends and colleagues, all prominent in their own fields, who have been in conversation with Mike’s work over the years.

A symposium at the University of Manchester covering 'Theories, Policies, and Prospects  for Urban Communities in The Wake of the Global Financial Crisis'

The workshop will consist of three sessions held between 11.00 and 17.00 at St Hugh's College, led by students who are either working on, or have recently finished their doctoral studies. The first two sessions will be structured around specific issues and questions submitted in advance by participants.

Financial crisis has raised the question of whether and how mutuals could play a larger role in the provision of financial services as part of a more diverse ecology of firm types and business models within the financial sector. This workshop encourages debate and dialogue amongst academics, policy makers and financial service providers from inside and outside the mutual sector who have different answers to the question about the future of mutuals. The aim is to promote better general understanding of the future of retail financial services and specifically of the arguments for and against a larger role for mutuals in the context of more general policy choices about firm types and business models for established providers and new entrants.

We will bring together politicians, academics, practitioners, regulators and media in a lively, informal debate with each other and a small mixed audience. The workshop format with around 35  in the room is designed to ensure variety and participation. There will be short 15 minute presentations from different points of view giving academic input and a variety of diverse (for, against and agnostic) plus questions from the floor; all under Chatham House rules which should allow practitioners to speak freely. The workshop is be organised by the Centre for Research in Socio Cultural Change at the University of Manchester and the Mutuality Research Programme at the University of Stirling who are grateful for the support of our sponsors The Economic and Social Research Council and the British Acdemy.

Further details from karel.williams@mbs.ac.uk

For more information click here

During the 1990s and 2000s, urban policy researchers championed the ‘creative city’, the potential for arts and avant-garde culture to revitalise cities and promote urban development. This seminar examines what is happening to the creative city paradigm after the worldwide financial crash of late 2008, and in particular in the UK where it has hit hard.

 What is the relationship between the museum and visuality?   A seminar convened by Andrew Hill and Helen Rees Leahy.