PAHC was formed in 2017 from the merger of the Manchester School of Art, Manchester Fashion Institute and the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Science. It offers an integrated programme with a clear and distinctive academic and intellectual identity. Our rationale is built around re-imagining forms of knowledge creation through multidisciplinary, cross faculty approaches which play to the unique strengths of the university’s radical history of generating knowledge through praxis. As a modern university, we have a tradition of engaged research, often delivered through collaboration and reflected in an openness to partnerships inside and outside academia. Alongside traditional disciplinary-based approaches PAHC highlights applied, practice-based and inter and multidisciplinary methodologies and promotes projects with elements of social, cultural and public engagement.

PAHC provides research and skills training through our Researcher Development Programme (RDP) workshops and events. The RDP is a focus for our research community and aims to provide a foundation for the understanding of the wider culture and society.

PAHC is a vigorous research community of over 250 postgraduate and early career researchers in the Arts and Humanities with an agenda to do and act in the world in ways that are relevant to society and its cultures through academically rigorous and ethical research.