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Research

All research shares a vital purpose to stimulate new ideas, new technologies and new wealth through innovation and development.

Thriving partnerships with industry, commerce and the professions mean we are engaging the full spectrum of multi-disciplinary research opportunities. We have collaborations with colleagues in other universities nationally and internationally.

Our staff are increasingly influencing national and international debate around key issues in Arts and Music, Design, Linguistic, Public Policy and Management.

Arts and Music

Centre for Fine Art Research This centre’s activities comprise exhibitions of artists' work (including performance and electronic media), curation of projects & events and through written publications.

Centre for Composition & Performance Using Technology The Centre for Research into Composition and Performance using Technology uniquely draws together composers, performers, engineers and technicians in the exploration of the potential for the real-time interaction of musical performance and computer-based systems.

Design

Centre for Design Innovation This centre exhibits excellence in the creation, execution, promotion, management, development and evaluation of the design process and it does this across the broad range of design disciplines. This grouping of cognate disciplines is broader than normally found elsewhere and gives us the opportunity to build genuinely interdisciplinary design research.

Linguistics

Research and Development Unit for English Studies. The Research and Development Unit for English Studies (RDUES) comprises a small team of corpus linguists, software engineers and statisticians. We carry out applied research in corpus linguistics, developing new descriptions of the language in use and tools for the extraction and management of knowledge in databases. The Unit's linguistic background is broad: corpus-based linguistics, lexicography, applied linguistics, the study of modern English language, modern languages, TEFL.

Public Policy

Public Policy Research at the University covers a range of areas and takes place in a number of centres:

Centre for Criminal Justice Policy and Practice This centre was launched in spring 2003 with the objective of further developing the existing strength in the teaching and researching of criminal justice

Music Education Research Centre This centre is grounded in school classrooms; includes all aspects of music education, formal and informal; and concerns itself with all styles and typologies of music.

Centre for Community Mental Health This centre works to improve services and life opportunities for people with severe and enduring mental health problems and focuses on tackling social exclusion through the development of innovative approaches to service provision through training, education and research.

Centre for Research into Quality This centre has extensive experience in delivering high quality policy research for higher education at institutional, national and international levels, in prison policy in the areas of HIV/Aids, drugs and suicide and in other types of social research. The professional research team has extensive expertise in both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, including large-scale surveys, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviewing.

Management

The Management and Enterprise Development Centre undertakes evaluation studies for private, public sector and community/voluntary sector organisations. The team members have particular expertise in the evaluation of: entrepreneurial learning, leadership, human resource development, innovation management, social purpose and all aspects of intellectual capital. In addition to applied research and consultancy for industry, policy research is undertaken for regional, national, EU and international government.