09:00 – 09:30: Arrival and coffee
09:30 - 09:45: Event welcome
Chair: Dr Chloe Steadman
09.45–10.45: KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Dr Nicola Headlam (Freelance researcher and policy expert)
'Industrial strategy, place policy, the growth mission and other snarks to hunt'
Nic has more than 20-years’ experience working within all aspects of the multi-helix innovation system; central and local government, civil society and campaigning, academic research and knowledge mobilisation and in industry. Along the way, she has honed expertise in urban and regional subnational economic development, the roles of government in making and shaping place, and in data and evidence for transformation. In 2025, she has launched Placecast, a podcast hosted by the LPIP at the University of Birmingham, where she is a policy fellow. She also acts as freelance economic advisor on the role of leadership and partnerships, urban and living lab forms for research, future of cities and foresighting methods, urban transformations, place-branding and urban regeneration and the spatial consequences of public policy. She works on the intersection of governance with economic development and the importance of institutions in infrastructure, and has broad experience of the limits of weak and improvised structures. She is passionate about the potential of subsidiarity to and through reformed local government to remedy some of the egregious inequalities of the UK and is hopeful that recast central-local relations, rooted in strong evidence and partnerships for pro-place policy and implementation hold the key to socio-spatial disparity. In this presentation, Nic will outline the shifting policy and funding landscape around place-focused research.
10:45 – 11:00: Break
11:00 – 12:00: SHOWCASING PLACE RESEARCH 1
Chair: Dr Jenny Kanellopoulou
11.00-11.20: Dr Pinar Oruc (University of Manchester)
Placemaking, heritage and IP law
This presentation will introduce joint research on copyright and trademark law strategies for placemaking and heritage in three European cities, which was undertaken for the H2020-funded ‘reCreating Europe’ project. It will be followed by more general findings on IP, public domain and digital heritage from my forthcoming monograph.
11:20 - 11:40: Dr Aggelos Panayiotopoulos (Liverpool John Moores University)
Invisible cities: A story of (failed?) tourism development
In an entanglement of human existence, poetry and politics, this presentation aims to expose radical contingencies of development and opportunities for radical change. In doing so, Faliraki, Rhodes is discussed as “a succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust… wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable” (Italo Calvino, 1972, p. 146).
11:40 - 12:00: Dr Christos Pantelidis (Manchester Met)
Virtual reality and place attachment: A latent class analysis approach to understanding domestic tourist segments for a rural destination
This study applies Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify hidden tourist subgroups based on place attachment. Findings help rural destinations create targeted, loyalty-driven marketing strategies. LCA enhances segmentation accuracy, offering deeper insights into tourist behaviour and enabling more personalised and effective place marketing in both virtual and real-world contexts.
12:00 – 13:00: Lunch
13:00 – 14:00: SHOWCASING PLACE RESEARCH 2
Chair: Dr Maarja Kaaristo
13:00 - 13:20: Dr Laura Taggart (Manchester Met)
Commensality and culture: The value of foodways in shaping people and place
This presentation will welcome input on work in progress ideas which seek to consolidate strands of knowledge about intangible heritage, everyday practice, and cultural value. Areas for discussion include methods for eliciting and presenting hyperlocal knowledges and acknowledging and incorporating local identities in policy.
13:20 - 13:40: Prof Nigel Morgan (Manchester Met)
Intersectionality of ageing, masculinities, and femininities in tourism spaces
Studies suggest that older men seek adventure and physical challenges during travel, which may reinforce gender performance stereotypes and pressurise men whose identities diverge from these perceived norms. This presentation will report on an ethnographic study examining how older Chinese men negotiate and perform gender identities in tourism, extending debates beyond the present focus on western contexts.
13:40 - 14:00: Dr Alessandro Graciotti (Swansea University)
On the nomadic ethical placemaking of the rural idyll
The rural idyll conveys utopian aspirations, repressed by advanced capitalist market logics. Drawing on Braidotti's nomadic ethics, I propose a radically non-anthropocentric conceptualisation of the rural idyll, grounded in local food consumers’ life-affirming desire to landscape a rural idyllic virtuality – a Deleuzoguattarian ‘rural of the future’ in which the human becomes ontologically imperceptible.
14:00 – 15:00: COLLABORATING ON PLACE RESEARCH
Chair: Dr Chloe Steadman
14:00 - 14:20: Dr Maarja Kaaristo (Manchester Met) and Anna Baatz (Canal and River Trust)
Walking, looking, reflecting: Rochdale and Ashton Canals in central Manchester as watery places
This presentation shares findings from a collaborative study between the Canal & River Trust and researchers from Salford University and Manchester Met using eye-tracking and qualitative interviews to explore visual interactions and experiences of research participants walking along Manchester's Rochdale and Ashton Canals. We will discuss our preliminary results from the study, focusing on the perception of the canals’ impact on wellbeing, as well as our collaboration for place-based research.
14:20 - 14:40: Prof Gary Warnaby (Manchester Met)
Collaborating with practitioners: Co-authoring considerations
Based on experience over the years of working with numerous practitioners to produce research outputs, I discuss the nature of such collaborations in terms of the motivations underpinning them and the different modes of co-authoring, structured using what I have termed the 3Cs: Context, Connections and Co-authoring.
14:40 - 15:00: Dr Jenny Kanellopoulou (Manchester Law School)
Revisiting cultural heritage interpretations from the “place-up”: Examples from the UK, Greece, and Slovenia
This study evaluates peripheralised cultural heritage, addressing the gap between cultural heritage in texts (legal/policy) and cultural heritage in places experiencing the gravitational pull of official cultural heritage representations. Specifically, it examines the extent to which UNESCO-recognised sites subsume their surrounding cultural heritage, resulting in cultural peripheralisation. It also highlights the importance of collaboration with local actors, such as peripheral galleries in the Wirral and Slovenia, and residents associations in Rhodes, Greece. These collaborations are crucial in shaping social identity and enabling communities to meet material and socio-economic changes.
15:00 - 15:15: Break
15:15 - 16.00: PANEL DISCUSSION: DOING ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP
Chair: Prof Steve Millington
Emma James (Director, Places Made Limited)
Prof Jennie Shorley (Academic Director, Centre for Enterprise, Manchester Met)
Dr Paul O’Hare (Senior Lecturer in Geography and Development, Manchester Met)
Margaret Dale (Director and Trustee if Holmfirth Tech, Senior Fellow IPM)
16:00 - 16.15: Closing words and IPM Network update
Ian Harvey (Head of IPM) and Dr Chloe Steadman
16:15: onwards
Optional post-event social (HOME).