Dr Helen Manchester

Urban Educational Futures, sociotechnical change and social justice: Changing educational and social landscapes bring about a need to understand education as lifelong and life-wide. For instance, ageing populations create new communities of learners (for example, in care homes) and the potential to access learning outside schools is resulting in new, experimental, online and offline educational ‘institutions’.

A significant part of my research involves working with others in the city to explore the co-design of cutting edge creative digital technologies with groups who might generally feel themselves to be excluded from the digital environment. I am also working with others in the city to explore the issues faced by the young and the old both now and in the future and to design research that increases their visibility and their chances to connect with each other in intergenerational work.

Methodological Innovation: I develop methodologically innovative approaches to research – working across disciplines to collaborate on research projects with artists, technologists, young and older people, community organisations and policy-makers.