The Hidden Architecture: Systems that Shape Research Culture
| Dates: | 8 July 2026 |
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| Times: | 12:00 - 14:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Creative Manchester |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Alumni |
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| Speaker: | Anna-Maria Sichani, Ed Watts, Jessica Smith, Jamie Robinson |
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Join us for an informal research café exploring how the infrastructures available dictate the boundaries of the research done.
Universities and cultural institutions must change to allow interdisciplinary, collaborative research to flourish. This ambition takes many forms – from building shared digital systems to partnering equitably with communities and embracing the civic purpose of our institutions. Yet these transformative projects are often held back by a legacy of interrelated technical and administrative systems.
These frameworks actively permit certain actions while structurally inhibiting others. Within universities and cultural institutions alike, this soft infrastructure tends to enable traditional, siloed work but constrains collaborative, cross-boundary projects. From research bid conventions to information inaccessibility, and from finance protocols to metadata incompatibility, the outcome is the same: the infrastructure dictates the boundaries of the research.
This Research Café provides a space for information-sharing and collaborative problem-solving between academic researchers, GLAM professionals, and digital practitioners. How exactly does our shared infrastructure inhibit our practice, and what essential work are our current systems failing to support? What informal workarounds are you using to bypass these constraints today? And how do we move beyond these temporary stopgaps to redesign the infrastructure itself? Join us on July 8th at Contact Theatre to collectively outline the structural shifts required to build an environment that genuinely enables equitable, cross-institutional innovation.
Speakers
Anna-Maria Sichani
Role: BRAID / School of Advanced Studies
Organisation: University of London
Ed Watts
Role: Head of Civic Engagement
Organisation: The Whitworth Gallery
Jessica Smith
Role: Senior Curator and Creative Arts Archivist, Special Collections
Organisation: The John Rylands Library
Jamie Robinson
Role: Imaging Manager, Digital Reach
Organisation: The John Rylands Library
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Contact Theatre
Oxford Road
Manchester
