Place Platform Symposium

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. 

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.
Pinar Oruc: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/persons/pinar.oruc

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).
 

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.

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. 

 

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.
 

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.
 

Panel discussants (still in progress...):
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):
 

Prof Steve Millington (Professor of Place Management, Manchester Met):