The University of Liverpool hosted N8 Planning Forum will focus on four identified areas of cross-disciplinary interest
Researchers, practitioners and policy-makers working in arts and humanities across the North will meet at the University of Liverpool to discuss a pilot project seeking to stimulate reinvention and generate growth across the region.
New Thinking from the North is led by the University of Liverpool, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and facilitated by the N8 Research Partnership.
Four areas of interest
The N8 partners have already held four workshops to highlight current areas of intellectual momentum, research interest and collaborative activity around the themes of heritage, digital, sustainability and imagination.
The Planning Forum, being held on 25 March, builds upon previous findings and aims to focus discussion on four identified areas of cross-disciplinary interest: Re-doing Universities, Rebellious North, Accessing the Past and Imagining the Future.
Rebellious North coincides with the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, falling in 2015. An exhibition will be held in Durham to commemorate this and tell stories of acts of rebellion across the North, from 1215 to the present day. N8 researchers will be invited to think creatively about ways in which this theme might stimulate interdisciplinary, cross-institutional, collaborative research activity.
Access to the past is a fundamental need for arts and humanities researchers, but has changed radically with the advent of digital resources and proliferation of digital archives. N8 researchers will be asked to examine ways in which the past can be made more accessible, both digitally and through direct interaction with people and artefacts.
Setting the agenda
The final area, Reimagining the Future, considers how the power of creative imagination and critical inquiry can be harnessed to address future research challenges, both through theoretical and practice-based approaches.
Outcomes of New Thinking from the North will include collaborative research projects, joint publications, action learning and reflexive practices, networks, cross-institutional teaching and research training, as well as agenda setting around the role of partner institutions and researchers across the N8 Universities.
To find out more, contribute or contact project representatives from any partner institution please email Project Lead, Professor Dinah Birch on dbirch@liverpool.ac.uk or Research Administrator, Wendy Asquith on wendyasq@liv.ac.uk.
