Research Methods in the Arts & Humanities
Arts and Humanities research offers powerful ways to understand the world, address complex challenges and create meaningful change. At the heart of this collection is a focus not only on what our researchers study, but on how they investigate their questions and put their expertise into practice.
Research Themes
How the humanities make sense of the world
Across six areas of research strengths - creative industries; digital; environment; fairer societies; health; and heritage - arts and humanities research makes use of a rich and varied range of methods. These include archival research, close reading and oral history, alongside co-creation, interviews, ethnography, computational analysis, geospatial science and socio-legal research.
The projects featured here demonstrate how these approaches can be adapted, combined and applied in different contexts. They show researchers working with communities, cultural organisations and industry partners; analysing language, laws, landscapes and historical records; using emerging technologies responsibly; and drawing on lived experience to shape new knowledge.
Explore the six research strengths to discover how our academics are investigating subjects including intellectual property and audience engagement, responsible artificial intelligence, climate change and human–animal relations, restorative justice and inequality, disability history and healthcare ethics, and cultural and linguistic heritage.
Together, these examples highlight the breadth of methodological expertise within the arts and humanities academic community and the possibilities it creates for interdisciplinary research, external collaboration and new postgraduate projects. They also offer a glimpse into a lively research culture in which established approaches are combined with emerging technologies, creative practices and collaborative ways of working.
The accompanying glossary provides a straightforward introduction to some of the principal research methods and approaches used across the Arts and Humanities.
