The University of Manchester’s Centre for Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) is to receive another 5 years of funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
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The boost of £4.5million ensures the Centre's core funding will be renewed for a further period of five years, from 2009-2014.
CRESC, based at The University of Manchester and the Open University, is the only major British social science investment to explore issues of culture and social change.
It has developed close links with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the BBC, the Office of National Statistics, and with private sector partners such as KPMG.
CRESC has carried out internationally acclaimed academic work including 'Culture, Class, Distinction' published by Routledge earlier this year. Carried out by Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright, the study is the most systematic account of people's cultural tastes and practices in the areas of music, television and film viewing, reading, the visual arts, sport, and eating out ever conducted in the UK.
CRESC's work on financialization and financial innovation, led by Karel Williams with Ismail Erturk, Julie Froud, Adam Leaver and Johnna Montgomerie has been prescient in the current financial crisis
CRESC has also revived the study of elites by focusing on new groups of the working rich in and around the financial markets.
As an example of CRESC's burgeoning user profile, Penny Harvey has developed a research partnership with the international design and consultancy engineers ARUP, to explore their use of 3D digital modelling in relation to the reconfiguration of urban public space.
In taking over as Chair of CRESC's Advisory Board, Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice Chancellor of Warwick, called CRESC a 'great institution'.
Prof Karel Williams, of Manchester Business School, taking over as Convening Director said: "Having established ourselves in our first five years, we now have a series of great new themes interrogating the nature of social and cultural participation, the cultural dimensions of the current crisis of capitalism, and the role of expertise in shaping social change.
"We are pursuing these with international partners from across the globe and with leading public and private sector user groups.
"It is going to be an exciting time."
