
Professor Helen Manchester
M.Ed(Manch.), PhD(Manch.)
Current positions
Professor of Participatory Sociodigital Futures
School of Education
Contact
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Research interests
I work on participatory and design based research that foregrounds experiences of ageing, culture, connectivity and digital inclusion. I am particularly interested in sociodigital futures and questions of social justice.
I am currently running an UKRI Healthy Ageing funded research project ‘Connecting through Culture as we Age’. I am co-investigator on the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures. The Centre is a five year programme of work bringing together world-leading interdisciplinary expertise to explore sociodigital futures in the making to support fair and sustainable ways of life.
I am particularly interested in feminist and post human approaches to researching digital inclusion, (in particular ageing and digital technologies), just futures, and participatory methods. I develop methodologically innovative approaches to researching with minoritized communities, often working in collaboration with artists, technologists, civil society organisations and policy-makers. I have published widely in the field of ageing and technologies, on participatory methods and co-designing technologies with minoritized communities.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Squiboon
Role
Co-Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
13/03/2023 to 12/09/2023
ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesDates
01/05/2022 to 30/04/2027
Connecting through culture as we age
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of EducationDates
01/03/2021 to 29/02/2024
Connecting through culture as we age: digital innovation for healthy ageing
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of EducationDates
01/03/2021 to 29/02/2024
Empowering Citizen-Oriented Smart City Innovation in Mexico (ECOSCIM)
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of EducationDates
01/02/2019 to 31/01/2022
Thesis supervisions
A study of knowledge creation-oriented activity through a collaborative media project in two South Korean schools
Supervisors
Mobilising Critical Media Literacy through Documentary Film Production
Supervisors
Neighbourhood Planning in the Localism Act 2011
Supervisors
Creating Opportunities for the Emergence of Intergenerational Communities of Practice Using Place-based Storytelling and Technologies
Supervisors
The development of Intercultural Competence between primary school children from Mexico and Spain
Supervisors
A Critical Realist Analysis of the Legitimising Affects of the Entrepreneurial University
Supervisors
A Mobile Learning Model for Clinical Learning in Hong Kong
Supervisors
Ideas of the future and their place in young people’s internal conversation
Supervisors
Designing an Intergenerational Third-Space to Develop Critical-Digital-Literacy
Supervisors
Not “just another school day”
Supervisors
Publications
Selected publications
01/12/2013Space, place and social justice in education: Growing a bigger entanglement
Qualitative Inquiry
School ethos and the spatial turn: ‘capacious’ approaches to research and practice
Qualitative Inquiry
Mapping Learning Lives
Mapping Learning Lives
Creative Approaches to Improving Participation
Creative Approaches to Improving Participation
Recent publications
15/01/2025Datafied ageing futures
Big Data and Society
Facilitating co-design in healthcare
CoDesign
Book Review Symposium for Juliane Jarke and Jo Bates (Eds.). (2024). Dialogues in Data Power: Shifting Response-Abilities in a Datafied World
Postdigital Science and Education
Community Robotics
2024 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO)
An Intersectional Lifecourse Lens and Participatory Methods as the Foundations for Co-Designing with and for Minoritised Older Adults
Computer Supported Cooperative Work