Culture, Heritage, People and Place

Principal Investigator
Manchester Metropolitan University

Dr Tamara West's research spans cultural heritage and place, regional development, and cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary methods, with additional expertise in place-based identities, co-creation, and photography and storytelling as memory practices. She is Project Lead on Cultural Heritage, People and Place (CHerPP), funded by the AHRC–DCMS Research culture and heritage capital programme — a collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University and National Museums Liverpool. She is also Co-Investigator on the AHRC–DFG-funded project Romani Migration between Germany and Britain (1880s–1914), a collaboration between the University of Münster and the University of Liverpool.

Dr West is a member of the ESRC Assessor College and the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College, an ESRC Peer Review College Member (since 2024), and an AHRC Expert Reviewer (since 2023). She served as British Council Expert Reviewer and Panel Member for Research Environment and Researcher Links funding programmes (2018–2025). She holds an Honorary Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Liverpool, where she previously led the ESRC-funded networking grant Transnational Memory Practices in the UK and South Korea, and worked on the evaluation of cultural policy and governance including a critical exploration of the European Capital of Culture hosting legacy.

Prior to Liverpool, Dr West held research and teaching posts at the University of Birmingham across the Birmingham Business School, the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, and the Digital Humanities Hub, working on collaborative AHRC and EU projects in digital cultural heritage and regional development. Her PhD in Cultural Geography investigated memory, photography and identity in post-Second World War Displaced Persons camps in Germany; her BA was in History of Film, Photography and Graphic Media.

View Dr Tamara West's MMU staff profile

Co-Investigator - Community Engagement Lead
Liverpool Business School, LJMU

Prof Rafaela Neiva Ganga is a Professor in Public Sociology at Liverpool Business School, working at the intersection of arts, health, and innovation. Using sociological theories and interdisciplinary methods, her research creates evidence-based social change across cultural policy, public health, and business innovation. She has authored over 100 research outputs in five languages, contributing to leading Q1 journals and cultural policy reports — including for the European Commission — with her work cited by the OECD and the Portuguese, EU, and UK Parliaments.

Prof Neiva Ganga has secured over £13 million in research and innovation funding (£2 million for LJMU), supporting projects with measurable public impact. In cultural policy, she co-developed monitoring and evaluation frameworks and cultural strategies for European Capitals of Culture in Slovakia, Portugal, and Poland, as well as the Liverpool Boroughs of Culture. She established the evaluation framework for the Boroughs of Culture programme in 2019 and has led its development across all subsequent years.

Prof Neiva Ganga has presented at nearly 50 global conferences and delivered keynote addresses internationally, with contributions to arts and health recognised through roles as European Commission Expert and UNESCO Newton Prize Reviewer. She has held Visiting Scholar positions in Brazil, China, Europe, and the USA. Before joining LJMU in 2016, she held faculty positions at the University of Porto, the University of Coimbra, and the Porto Social Work School, and worked as a visiting fellow and curator at Casa da Música and Serralves Museum (Portugal), Tate Liverpool, and Šiuolaikinio Meno Centras (Lithuania).

View Prof Rafaela Neiva Ganga's staff profile

Co-Investigator – Survey and Social Cost-Benefit Analysis Lead
Liverpool Business School, LJMU

Dr Steve Nolan is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Liverpool Business School, where he leads the Contemporary Economic Policy module (Level 6). He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester in 2021. His research focuses on the impacts of public policy, with interests spanning cultural value, crime, labour markets, and entrepreneurship.

Dr Nolan has led and contributed to several funded research projects, including evaluations for the UK Home Office, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Welsh Government, and National Museums Liverpool. He supervises a range of interdisciplinary doctoral projects covering topics including mega-mergers in housing, employment of prison leavers, cultural mega-events, integrated care leadership, and gender equity in management accounting.

Beyond academia, Dr Nolan regularly contributes economic commentary to national media, including BBC News, BBC Breakfast, and BBC 5 Live. He represents LJMU as a champion for The Pandemic Institute and serves on its Internal Scientific Advisory Panel.

View Dr Steve Nolan's staff profile

Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Manchester Metropolitan University

Dr Laura Taggart is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the CHerPP project, specialising in qualitative methods and the study of cultural value, everyday culture, and heritage practices. She brings experience spanning environmental social science, public sector social research, and the arts, giving her an interdisciplinary perspective on how cultural heritage is encountered and valued in everyday life.

Her doctoral research examined 'Hidden Culture' and food practices, investigating how cultural value is produced, negotiated, and sustained outside formal cultural institutions. Her wider research interests include non-economic approaches to value, power, affect, identity, and questions of social and environmental justice.

On CHerPP, Dr Taggart contributes qualitative research expertise to the project's community engagement and fieldwork strands, supporting the team's work with diverse communities in Liverpool and the City Region.

View Dr Laura Taggart's LinkedIn profile

Research Partner
National Museums Liverpool

National Museums Liverpool (NML) is CHerPP's lead research partner, providing access, expertise and community networks central to the project's fieldwork. The partnership focuses on the Waterfront Transformation Project — a 10-year masterplan reimagining the area between the Royal Albert Dock and Mann Island. The transformation encompasses the International Slavery Museum, the Maritime Museum, Museum of Liverpool, and associated public realm spaces including Canning Dock, a dry dock of deep significance in relation to the city's role in the transatlantic slave trade.

NML have undertaken extensive community engagement work in the design process, giving the CHerPP team a foundation of knowledge about who is actively engaging with these sites and collections. Building on this, CHerPP's contribution is to investigate non-use at a city and regional scale — exploring what benefits people might derive from the transformation project even if they have not, or do not intend to, visit directly, and how those benefits connect with their own heritage practices, memories, and sense of place and identity.

Visit the NML website