Research in Arts and Law

We explore what it means to be human – in historical and cultural contexts, within ethical and legal norms and through languages and communication.

Research projects and centres

  • Algorithmic accountability

    Over the past three decades, advances in the power, speed, scale and sophistication of digital technologies have radically transformed almost every sphere of modern life.

  • Music in Contemporary Cultures

    Our composers work in diverse media, from symphony orchestra to sound art; our scholars employ methodological approaches ranging from philosophy, through ethnography and gender studies, to psychology and neuroscience.

  • Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society Research Group

    Conducting social scientific and humanities-based research on: the public understanding and communication of the relationship between science and religion.

  • Out of Our Minds

    Allowing researchers to develop new, cognitively plausible ways of describing speakers’ linguistic knowledge, by using computational modelling techniques that mimic the way in which humans learn.

  • Deluded by Experience

    Our beliefs shape our understanding of the world and our success or failure in interacting with it. To that end, our beliefs are sensitive to evidence and are supposed to be true.

  • Gender and public history in postcolonial Ghana

    Focusing on Ghanaian women’s organising and campaigning strategies under military, single-party, and short-lived multi-party governments, particularly in the under-studied period between the mid 1960s and the early 1990s.

  • Midland Art Papers

    A collaborative online journal, working between the University of Birmingham and 11 partner institutions to research and explore the world class works of art and design in public collections across the Midlands.

  • Arts of Place

    Why ‘sense of place’ matters to individuals and communities; how responsiveness to a particular patch of ground, or a view, or a building, or the route of a journey can open up powerful ideas that connect people across time and across the world.

Discover more in the College of Arts and Law