Heritage research
Our world-leading heritage researchers are examining the role that tangible and intangible heritage has in modern society. Through creative heritage research projects, we're developing scalable solutions to the challenges faced by the heritage industry across our three heritage research themes: Wellbeing and creativity, Earth heritage, and Environment and culture.
Wellbeing and creativity
Though often overlooked, heritage sites have an important role to play as spaces to reduce wellbeing inequalities. Through our research into heritage sites and their relationship with memory, identity, and belonging, we are developing creative programs that improve community wellbeing through interaction with heritage.
Understanding the connection between heritage and wellbeing
"It’s really important that we start to understand the power of heritage”
Heritage and wellbeingDr Faye Sayer and Dr Francesco Ripanti are helping us to understand why preserving heritage places is so important for our wellbeing. In Dr Sayer's research, she is for the first time providing applicable evidence of the connection between heritage and wellbeing. Dr Ripanti's creative heritage projects around the world are putting this research into practice.
"Heritage spaces can serve as safe environments for expressing emotions"
Heritage and wellbeingDr Francesco Ripanti explores the importance access to heritage sites has in mental wellbeing. Through his EU-funded LOGGIA project in Italy and Cyprus, he designed archaeology-based wellbeing interventions—like creative activities and landscape exploration—that improved participants’ mental health and sense of belonging. His current work has him partnering with museums and heritage sites to create inclusive, engaging spaces where communities can connect, co-create, and find emotional support through heritage.
Earth heritage
Earth heritage comprises the landforms, rocks, fossils, minerals and soils that surround us and the ways that people understand, value, are inspired by and use them.
What is earth heritage?
“My favourite finds are about finding out something new”
A career in archaeologyFrom his obsession with peatlands and ‘bog bodies’ to being a regular on Time Team, Professor Henry Chapman opens up about his 40-year career in archaeology in this article. He speaks on where his interest in archaeology began, his most interesting finds, and why Earth heritage is such an important part of heritage research and conservation.
"Insect archaeology can tell us about the itchiness of life in the past"
The history of archaeoentomologyDr David Smith is a world expert in archaeoentomology, a field pioneered at the University of Birmingham since the 1960s. Here, he explains the crucial value insect remains hold in narrating the past.
"It’s an ongoing research project as well as training"
Uncovering the BerthEach summer for the last decade, the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology's Field School has been taking students to a publicly inaccessible field in the depths of rural Shropshire to work on their excavation skills. Known as The Berth, the 65-acre site is a patchwork of marshy peatland and open pasture, surrounding an isolated hill that rises at its centre. An Iron Age hillfort, stone causeways and enclosure lie beneath the soil that are thought to date back to 400-100BC.
Environment and culture
We’re exploring the intricate relationship between cultural heritage and the environment. Through creative projects and close collaboration with Indigenous peoples, our researchers are developing new understanding of how the heritage and tourism industries can adapt to the threat of climate change.
“I want the world to appreciate Vietnam’s rich artistic traditions”
Vietnamese musical heritageProfessor Alexander M. Cannon's research programme, SoundDecisions, is investigating how music could increase Indigenous farmers’ uptake of new technologies in the Mekong Delta. The project is capturing and measuring how traditional music practice among these local farmers in southern Vietnam helps to build trust and open them up to new ideas. Here, he introduces five pieces of Vietnamese music that show its extraordinary power to connect the past with the present.