Research Centres

Centre for Democracy and Human Rights

The centre brings together researchers on human rights, democracy, the state, social democracy, political corruption, gender equality, post-Communist parties, radical social theory, Islamism, globalization, labour markets, international political economy and political communications.

Centre for English Literature and Language

Researchers at the Centre engage with English language literatures written in all major periods from the Medieval to the present day. The Centre has particular strengths in popular print media, Holocaust poetry, literature and science, women's writing, Irish studies and creative writing.

Centre for European Security

Building upon existing strengths within history, contemporary security, terrorism and intelligence studies, the Centre acts as a focal point for research into the past and present of European security, aiming to transcend disciplinary boundaries in order to examine security, terrorism and intelligence issues together, in both their historical and contemporary dimensions.

Centre for Information Systems, Organisations and Society Research Centre (ISOS)

ISOS brings together the community of scholars who share an interest in the social and organisational aspects of information systems (IS) and information and communications technologies (ICTs). The centre members are particularly interested in advocating the "Salford School of Thought" in critical and interpretive research and there is a growing stream of work in the area of science and technology studies.

Centre for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

The Centre provides a stimulating environment for research in a wide range of subjects, including the syntax-semantics interface, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics; first and second language acquisition; corpus linguistics; descriptive linguistics (particularly English, French and Arabic), corpus linguistics, language pedagogy and lexicography.

Centre for Social Research

The Centre's work is characterised by a close engagement with policy makers, practitioners and the wider community to produce relevant and influential research. The Centre aims to build "positive partnerships" with outside agencies that focus on revealing and disseminating important messages for tackling problems and challenges faced by contemporary society. 

Centre for Translation and Interpreting

The Centre includes one of the largest clusters of translation and interpreting specialists in the UK and brings together the language expertise and scholarship of experts in literary, social and political theory to foster an interdisciplinary approach to translation and interpreting.

Communication, Cultural and Media Studies (CCM)

The work of CCM is characterised by an engagement with the social operations of culture and media, organised into groups focusing on 'screen media and media practice', 'cultural politics and social communication' and 'community, audience, and place'.

Contemporary Fine Art and Critical Theory Research Centre

The Centre brings together current Contemporary Arts Practice with Critical Theory and Contextual Studies researchers. This established group of practitioners and theorists participate in a broad range of process and practice, curatorship, critical writing and arts administration, with a belief that contemporary arts practice and its allied theory are key cultural drivers of social and economic importance.

Creative Technology and Communications Research Centre

The core emphasis of this Centre focuses on redefining and developing digital and electronic technologies and concepts for creative arts, applications and solutions that will enhance our human interaction and cultural engagement.

Enterprise and Innovation Research Centre

The Centre's mission is to learn from, and inform the Practice of Enterprise and Innovation, and disseminate the generated knowledge through development programmes, advice and publication.

Heritage and Design Innovation Research Centre

The centre reflects a well established synergy of research interests, and encourages new research relationships and directions, including a focus on design and heritage management, design management, design strategy, design for the built and human environment (incl. product and fashion design), environmental design, socially responsible design, design pedagogy, interpretation and presentation of heritage in museums and galleries, an engagement with museum visitors and audiences, the management and marketing of heritage, and designing for heritage environments - including the use of graphic design and interior design.

Marketing and Strategy Research Centre

The core of our work in marketing surrounds the consumption of products and services with special emphasis placed on the major differences between cultures and subcultures. Research is organised around a number of thematic areas, in both the private and public sectors: banking, tourism, international business markets and the branding of political parties. In Strategy our main areas of interest are corporate social responsibility and exploring and redefining the value chain.

Operations Management, Management Science and Statistics

The Centre enjoys a growing reputation for research in OR and Statistics, being rated at 5A in the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise, and 90% internationally recognised at RAE 2008. Activity is directed at the sustained development of high quality research programmes addressing substantial decision problems confronting Business, Industry, Commerce, Health Care and Government.

Organisational Behaviour and Leadership Research Centre

The Centre embraces a diverse set of established and emerging scholars in the broad area of management of organizations and institutions. Centre researchers have worked on projects funded by various bodies including ESRC, ESF and Nuffield; scholarly research outputs of the members of the Centre continue to be published in reputable journals and books highlighting theoretical, practical and policy implications.

Performance Research Centre

The research focus of the centre is predominantly driven by interest and activities in contemporary performance practice. Research interests centre largely on multimedia and new media performance modes including digital performance, site specific, networked performance and dance and screen as well as pedagogic research interests in the teaching of performance practice in the 21st century.

Salford Centre of Legal Research

The Salford Centre of Legal Research (SCoLR) was created in the summer of 2007 to act as a focal point for legal and socio-legal work being undertaken throughout the University. Within six months, its members were returned to RAE 2008 where over half of their published work was graded as being either of international excellence or international significance.

Salford Centre of Music Research

The Centre takes the term "popular" in its widest sense. Research interests incorporate work which explores music's social meanings and contexts, especially in the form with which it reaches a mass audience; compositions which operate within the stylistic frameworks of musical genres that have, until recently, been excluded from academic investigation (pop, rock, rhythm and blues, country, brass and wind band music); work which focuses on the histories and accompanying theories of the various genres affiliated under the rubric of popular music - hip hop, trance, heavy metal, mass improvisation.

Centre for Health, Sport and Rehabilitation Sciences Research

Research is organised through nine research programmes linked directly to health, health care and to the practice of health, sport and exercise professionals.

The Centre is a highly multidisciplinary environment with members drawn from the health professions, including physiotherapy, podiatry, sports rehabilitation, prosthetics and orthotics and occupational therapy, as well as engineering, sport science, and computing science.

Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research

The Centre's aim is to develop nursing and midwifery education and practice through real world research. This is achieved through: collaboration on funded research with a range of partners, publication of high quality reports, papers and conference presentations and the Centre's postgraduate programme. The Centre's research benefits service users and carers, nursing and midwifery educators and practitioners and other health and social care stakeholders.

Centre for Social Justice Research

The Centre is concerned with fairness and equity in society, exploring major issues such as poverty, exclusion, health inequalities and human rights. Research staff have varied interests and expertise in areas such as social epidemiology, sociology, public health, social policy, social work, psychology, historical archaeology, management, health economics and statistics. This enables the centre to pursue a contemporary research agenda that has social justice in the developed and developing world at its heart and which can be used to influence policy and practice in this important area.

Biomedical Research Centre

Biomedical Sciences Research represents the research activities of the University in the areas of Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry and Health-related topics. Members of the Institute undertake leading edge research in real-world areas, including the detection and treatment of parasitic diseases, and the development of new forms of cancer chemotherapy.

Ecosystems and Environment Research Centre

The Ecosystem & Environment Research Centre comprises around thirty researchers working on interdisciplinary projects concerned with disease ecology, biodiversity, socio-ecological systems, and landscape dynamics.

Acoustics Research Centre

The University has been carrying out acoustics research for over 30 years. Our research has fed into products that companies make and sell worldwide, as well as regulations and standards used in the UK, Europe and beyond. We also carry out much public engagement - getting more people aware and interested in acoustic science and engineering. Key areas of research include building and architectural acoustics, environmental noise, soundscapes, outdoor sound propagation, remote acoustic sensing of metrological conditions, human response to sound and vibration, audio signal processing and transducer design.

Autonomous Systems and Advanced Robotics Research Centre

The centre is part of the School of Computing, Science and Engineering at the University of Salford. The centre houses a multidisciplinary group lead by Prof Samia Nefti-Meziani with interests in autonomous systems and robotics and their constituent technologies. The group has strong national and international links with both industry and other research institutes. The core group of researchers in the laboratory includes over a dozen graduate students and three senior academic research members. This centre holds the academic (national and international) Master programmes in Robotics and Automation and Embedded systems and the projects are primarily associated with Aerospace industries in France and England.

CASE Control and Systems Engineering Research Centre

Our philosophy for research is to seek not only theoretical advances in the related subjects, but also to explore innovative concepts and novel ideas for practical applications. The total research grant at the CASE centre is well over £1million. Research themes include Control Engineering, Railway/Automotive Research, Computational Intelligence and Robotics, Biomedical Research, and Energy and Electrical Engineering.

Civil Engineering Research Centre

Research is focussed into four main themes, aligned with the core elements of the civil engineering curriculum: Structural Engineering, Transport Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering and Hydraulics. Our aim is to provide leading edge sustainable research that is both fundamental and relevant in today's changing society and environment, that is underpinned by strong links with academics from throughout Europe and with industrial partners, such as Network Rail, GMPTE, Atkins, Veolia and UIC. 

Centre for Applied Archaeology

The Centre for Applied Archaeology has three aims - to undertake undergraduate and post graduate teaching and research, especially within industrial archaeology and the built environment; to undertake, promote and research access to heritage and community archaeology; and to undertake archaeological consultancy work and professional development courses. The Centre is the only University-based archaeology organisation to be housed within the School of the Built Environment. It has already established multi-year landscape research and community archaeology projects, and is developing a range of professional seminars and post-graduate courses with an emphasis on industrial archaeology and the built environment. 

Centre for Disaster Resilience

The Centre works with communities around the world to increase their resilience to the threat posed by natural and human induced hazards.

The Centre for Disaster Resilience promotes research and scholarly activity that examines the role of building and construction to anticipate and respond to disasters that damage or destroy the built environment. The Centre is a focal point of excellence for promoting the understanding the University of Salford, UK, within its Built and Human Environment Research. The Centre undertakes a full range of research styles, from fundamental theory building to highly applied and widely disseminated. Holistic solutions to real world problems are facilitated by the flow, interaction and creation of knowledge across multi-disciplinary groups and networks.

Centre for Property and Facilities Management

The Centre is concerned with the engagement of people and the innovation of processes and settings in order to leverage the power of operational assets in transforming organisations. The areas in which the Centre is particularly interested in receiving research proposals include, but are not limited to, Healthy Buildings, Future Workplaces, Infrastructure Management, Sustainable FM and Computer Aided Facilities Management.

Construction Information Technology Research Centre

The Centre is at the forefront of developing Construction IT and has made significant contributions in communication, visualisation, integration, and intelligent systems research, process protocols, product models, knowledge-based systems and numerous integrated computing environments. Current efforts focus on developing modelling and simulation environments for the virtual prototyping of sustainable buildings and cities.

Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF)

SURF's research aims to generate understanding about how political, economic, social, technological and environmental changes interact to affect urban and regional futures. Addressing these challenges requires analysis of developing governance frameworks, as well as policy-specific and crosscutting issues. In so doing, this agenda seeks to research both the 'what' and the 'how' of contemporary urban and regional challenges.

Computer Networking and Telecommunications Research Centre

The Centre undertakes both pure and applied research in the general field of telecommunications and computer networking including computer networking technologies, wireless systems, networked multimedia applications, quality of service, mobile networking, intelligent buildings, context driven information systems and communication protocols. Members of the group are actively involved in a range of public engagement programmes, which aim to raise the awareness of these subjects for the general public, and in schools.

Data Mining and Pattern Recognition Research Centre

The Centre is developing novel methods and systems for the analysis and recognition of images and other data, learning behaviours and causal models that have a wide range of potential applications including prediction of credit ratings, restoration of historical documents, medical diagnosis, programme ratings, semantic tagging, segmentation of types of viewers and their behaviours, text mining and retrieval, intelligent scheduling, user modelling, and as embedded self-learning components in intelligent agents.

Management in Construction Research Centre (MIC)

The Centre promotes research in construction management at strategic, tactical and operational levels from local, national and international perspectives. The activities of the centre are underpinned by both theory and practice. In addition to promoting a community of practice, the centre also networks internationally with different stakeholder communities (individuals, organisations, policy makers and government bodies).

Materials and Physics Research Centre

Centre members are drawn from applied, computational and theoretical areas of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. Research areas include 'Complexity: applied nonlinear science', 'Atomistic materials modelling', 'Lasers and photonics theory', 'Atomic collisions in solids and ion beam physics', 'Chemical physics and biomaterials', 'Structural analysis and functional material properties', 'Magnetism and nanomaterials', 'Experimental applied optics', 'Stellar physics and space technology' and 'Theoretical solid mechanics'.

Research Centre for Education in the Built Environment (RCEBE)

The Centre promotes built environment education as a collaborative multi disciplinary research field both at the University and in the broader national and international built environment academic community. RCEBE addresses the development of innovation in educational theory and practice, learning technology and practice and evaluates student learning experiences to optimise approaches between academic discipline and multi disciplinary based research, university based education, and work place lifelong learning practices.

Salford Centre for Research and Innovation (SCRI)

The Centre's mission is "to be recognised as one of the leading multidisciplinary centres in the built and human environment nationally and internationally, in order to deliver a construction industry that is valued by society". Recent examples of the Centre's activities include an Optimal Learning Spaces for Schools project, the integration of a lean production management system with Building Information Modelling (BIM) and a major contribution to the development of the Energy House and Energy Hub initiatives.

SURFACE Inclusive Design Research Centre

SURFACE is a multi-disciplinary centre forging a joined-up approach to teaching, research and consultancy in inclusive design. Committed to tackling 'real world' challenges, the Centre explores design using the social model of disability, from the planning of the public realm to the detailing of the home, its products and technologies. Part of the highest-rated built environment research institute in the UK, SURFACE is supported by a worldwide network of partners, including experts from policy and industry. The Centre thrives on an international reputation for excellence, especially in the provision of award winning distance learning.

Urban Quality Research Centre (UQRC)

The Centre undertakes research and technical development to understand the relative capability of the built environment to satisfy the quality of life expectations of individuals, communities and society. The work of the Centre addresses issues from the scale of individual buildings to that of the neighbourhood and urban district, but is also interested in how better understanding of the problems at these scales of action can help wider regeneration planning of towns and cities. 

Virtual Environments and Future Media Research Centre

The Centre has been at the cutting edge of Virtual Reality (VR) for over ten years. It has an excellent research rating and its balanced emphasis on teaching, research and enterprise is unique. The Centre's vision is to lead research in virtual environment technology and fuel its take up through a focused program of research, teaching and technology transfer, maintaining its excellent research rating by being a centre of excellence, unique in Europe, able to meet diverse application needs through the widest range of collaborative, intelligent, immersive, pervasive and augmented reality technologies, and the deepest knowledge of how to apply them.