Research at the College of Arts, Humanities and Business

Researchers in the College of Arts, Humanities and Business undertake award-winning, internationally excellent, and impactful research. Our research ranges from language and literature, music and media, to financial studies, communication, technology studies, regulation, justice, identities, and community studies. Across different disciplines, we combine academic excellence with community engagement, policy impact, and creative and cultural contributions. The College’s research is organised around three schools:

• Bangor Business School
• School of History, Law and Social Sciences
• School of Arts, Culture and Language

Our research is firmly grounded in a sense of place through culture, materiality, mediality, literature, language, music, history, technology and institutions, along with an interest in the changing nature of communities, nations, structures of governance, and justice. This is reflected in our research themes set out below which allow researchers from across the College and the wider University to collaborate and produce innovative, interdisciplinary, and world leading research. This approach is not intended to exclude or diminish specific areas of research excellence outside these themes, but provides a broader set of thematic issues around which much of our research can coalesce.

Bangor has a proud tradition of world-leading research in Celtic studies, with particular focus and international links on the history, culture, literature, language, and politics of Wales. We house some of Wales’ leading research centres, which are directed by prominent Welsh historians, experts in Welsh law, Welsh culture, music, literature and poetry. Our research centres and research groups include:

• Research Centre Wales
• R.S. Thomas Centre
• Institute for the Study of Welsh Estates
• Centre for Arthurian Studies

Our researchers explore and practice aspects of culture and arts, and gather understanding of the components of civil society which strengthen community resilience to cope with contemporary changes and challenges. Based on significant archival and contemporary resources combined with artistic activity, we actively contribute to community culture and the arts to provide a place for the study of civil society in action. Alongside extensive activities in areas of creative writing, musical composition and performance, our research centres in this area include:

• Centre for Contemporary Poetry
• Stephen Colclough Centre for the History and Culture of the Book
• Centre for Film, Television, and Screen Studies

Communities across the world are connected by a complex web of governance, financial, and economic links, human migration, and questions around the scope and nature of institutions and principles of justice. The competing interests of local communities, nation states, and global and international economic systems require responsive research on regulations and governance, institutions, and community studies. Our economists, lawyers, social scientists and historians explore these complex links and how they are affected by questions of power, politics, and global challenges. Relevant research institutes include:

• Centre for Sustainability
• Institute for European Finance
• Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD)
• Emotional AI Lab

Facilitated by its location in a bilingual environment, Bangor University has outstanding strengths in areas of multi- and bilingualism and language use across communicative contexts, encompassing research excellence in language policy and planning, first and second language acquisition, discourse analysis and corpus studies, community and civil society use of language and its implications for identity, as well as the role of technology in language development. Additionally, research in this theme raises broader questions about the relationship of language and communication as a form of power, through corporate communications, ethics, journalism, persuasive communications and the media. In this theme, we are working closely with colleagues across the University and in particular colleagues in Canolfan Bedwyr and the Language Technology Unit. Our research centres and networks include:

• Centre for Research on Bilingualism
• Centre for Galician Studies in Wales
• Media and Persuasive Communication Network
• Technology and Language Research Network

The College facilitates research, engagement, and impact of regional, national and international excellence across our research themes, recognized through high profile, quality and peer-reviewed, publications, awards and prizes, prestigious grant capture and other means of external recognition. Specific focus concerns are:

• Embedding engagement into our academic enterprises, thus building pathways to impact into the research process from proposal to implementation and dissemination
• Mentoring, feedback and advice on research ideas, grant applications, and engagement, impact and innovation activities
• Access to College researchers with experience of grant capture and research award panel membership, especially UKRI
• Engaging with national and international research visitors through seminars, workshops and a visiting researcher scheme
• Connecting our research to the wider community to ensure that research supports the building of community resilience
• Facilitating and embedding knowledge exchange, engaging with external partners in the private, public or 3rd sector, reinforcing links to society and industry
• Facilitating and encouraging strategic coproduction of funding bids with stakeholders - engaging with KESS and KTP programmes and more
• Raising awareness within the College towards societal needs and economic concerns
• Enhancing focus on ethical industrial strategy, innovation, commercialisation and civic engagement
• Targeting areas of social need and funding opportunity
• Engaging with government, informing policies, developing research projects with the intention to inform governmental agendas
• Supporting Bangor University’s ‘Bangor 2050’ Strategic Plan that promotes the spread and use of Welsh, through research and practice.

The College is fully committed to the Concordat to Support the Career Development for Researchers and provides support for researchers at all stages of their careers. We support researchers by:

• Involving College ECR representatives in the College Research and Impact Group and its activities
• Recognising the variety of research, engagement and impact activities present in the College including creative practice as research and cultural engagement
• Mentoring to support grant capture and research career development
• Encouraging and recognising researchers’ contributions to research award panels, learned societies, and journal and other editorial work
• Providing time for research by supporting the principle of parity of protected time within schools and by offering College-wide study leave where it is well justified
• Representing the College’s research community’s interests and voice in the University
• Supporting researchers’ recognition through external measures of research excellence such as the Research Excellence Framework

Interdisciplinary research generates novel forms of knowledge, innovation, insights and creative outputs which are needed to address the grand challenges facing global society. The College acts as a platform for encouraging and facilitating interdisciplinary research, engagement and impact activities, connecting Schools across the College, as well as across the three Colleges in the University and their constituent Schools by:

• Organizing College wide and cross-College events
• Involving the College in strategic University-wide initiatives
• Establishing mechanisms to monitor governmental priorities, and match researchers and projects with relevant grant funding schemes as soon as they become available
• Supporting inter- and cross-disciplinary collaboration and grant applications
• Raising awareness of the College’s research, engagement and impact achievements, priorities, and strengths across the University, wider community, and internationally

• Enable and encourage all researchers to apply for appropriate (career level and discipline specific) high-quality research funding on a regular basis
• Continuously increase number and range of successful grant applications
• Embed engagement activities in all research projects from the outset
• Increase the number of high-quality publications through a coherent publication framework with a focus on quality over volume
• Encourage interdisciplinary networking events and participate in an increased number of interdisciplinary grant applications
• Encourage the building of teams within and beyond the institution, with a view to large grant capture.