Message from Thomas Schmidt, Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

20 Apr 2026

This week, Thomas reflects on SALC’s engagement with Manchester 2035 through partner-enabled teaching, considers the continuing work on the Teaching Sustainability project and student recruitment, and celebrates research funding success.

Dear colleagues,

As we move through this academic year, I want to begin by acknowledging the wider context in which we are all working. There is no doubt that financial pressures continue to shape the higher education landscape, and SALC is not immune to these challenges. Yet what continues to strike me is the vibrancy, resilience and creativity of our School. Even in testing circumstances, SALC staff remain intellectually ambitious and deeply committed to excellence.

This brings me to the School’s collective engagement with Manchester 2035, particularly its emphasis on engagement with partners. We feel that Manchester 2035’s vision to bring together partner-enabled teaching, research and engagement in a ‘single stack’ resonates particularly strongly with SALC’s long-standing strengths and our outstanding links with partners across the city and region, especially in the cultural and charitable sectors and in the creative industries, and that we are exceptionally well placed to contribute to – and help shape – this agenda.

Much of this expertise is already embedded in our teaching and research culture. The postgraduate taught placement module within the Institute for Cultural Practices (ICP), with more than 200 students annually from across the School and beyond, provides a strong foundation for partner-enabled teaching, while colleagues across SALC continue to develop innovative collaborations that benefit students, partners and the wider public alike.

The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) exemplifies this integrated approach particularly well, and I was delighted that its partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières to deliver an online MSc was formally renewed last month, speaking both to the quality of the work undertaken by colleagues and to the trust SALC has built with major international partners over time.

We are also continuing to strengthen our ties with Creative Manchester, an important conduit for our collaborations across research, policy and practice. I would like to pay tribute to John McAuliffe for his leadership in this space over the past five years – he now moves on to bigger things as the University’s first Associate Vice-President (Cultural Portfolio). We are all looking forward to working with the new Director of Creative Manchester, to be appointed soon, and to the opportunities this will open up for colleagues across the University.

While we are on culture and creativity, it is encouraging to see how the new programmes SALC introduced a few years ago under the auspices of the Faculty’s Size and Shape strategy continue to thrive, bucking the trend in a tough student recruitment environment. These programmes are Creative and Cultural Industries (BA and MA), Digital Media, Culture and Society (BA and MA), Library and Archive Studies (MA), and Music Performance (MusM).

Only a few days ago, senior staff from the Faculty met with representatives from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) who were really impressed with the way this provision engages with the relevant industry sectors in Greater Manchester in particular, with the University seen as a model of good practice across the UK.

These new degrees, designed from scratch, are also models in another respect. They are clearly and coherently structured, with a good and sustainable balance of core and optional modules, in a way that closely dovetails with the curriculum framework project that is currently being rolled out across the Faculty as part of Teaching Sustainability project work.

Over the next few years, and like the other three Schools, we are reviewing all our programmes to achieve consistency and transparency in terms of identity and choice (while recognising that there will always be good reasons for some local variation), and improving coherence across joint honours programmes. I am very grateful to colleagues who are already engaging thoughtfully and constructively in these discussions - consultation will remain central at every stage. This is demanding work, but it is also an opportunity to rethink our provision in ways that are sustainable, transparent and educationally sound.

I would like to conclude by celebrating what may be an unprecedented concentration of research funding success for SALC. In the past month, we have received confirmation of seven major research awards, amounting to c£1.5 million in new income to the School. These include an AHRC award to Kostas Arvanitis and Andy Hardman (Art History and Cultural Practices) for their project on Digitising Spontaneous Memorials; a Leverhulme Project Grant to Maggie Gale (Drama and Film) on The Writer as Social Activist in the Culture Industry; two BA Mid-Career Fellowships awarded to Emma Martin (Art History and Cultural Practices) and Laure Humbert (History); and three BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships secured by Felicia Chan (Drama and Film), Anthony Gerbino (AHCP) and Anindita Ghosh (History).

It is particularly striking that SALC colleagues have been awarded three of the eleven BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships awarded nationally this year – a remarkable testament to the strength and ambition of our research culture. My sincere thanks go to SALC Director Research Stuart Jones, to colleagues in the Research Office and Research Development Office, and to everyone involved in supporting these applications. Anyone who has ever submitted a research grant knows how indispensable this expertise is.

Taken together, these activities remind us of what SALC does best: producing world-leading research, educating students through intellectually rich and socially engaged curricula, and contributing meaningfully to the cultural life of our city, region and beyond.

Best wishes,

Thomas