Manchester Metropolitan University is centrally located with great public transport routes. The Conference and Events team will help you find the ideal venue for your event. We provide a range of innovative, accessible space, great technology, specialist facilities and residential accommodation, all at competitive rates.

When you hire one of our venues for your conference, event or study group, we will support you throughout, ensuring a flexible, friendly and efficient service.

We pride ourselves on our commitment to sustainability and in 2018 received the Academic Venues Award for ‘Best Sustainability’ following on from the CHS award for Best Sustainable Venue and Chairman’s Award earlier that year.

This research network offers academics a dynamic space to revisit the rich, complex legacies of nineteenth-century literature, culture and art, using them as a lens to understand the world we live in today — and to imagine the world we want to build for tomorrow. Rooted in Manchester, once nicknamed Cottonopolis for its pivotal role in the Industrial Revolution, the network explores how the city’s industrial past shaped not only local but global histories.

It does not shy away from the contradictions of this legacy. Manchester’s nineteenth-century prosperity was built on industries that exploited workers and the environment, yet the city also became a crucible for radical ideas and transformative social movements. From the tragic events of Peterloo to the fight for women’s suffrage, Manchester’s streets have been the stage for powerful struggles for justice and equality.

Bringing together scholars interested in figures like Elizabeth Gaskell, Friedrich Engels, the Pankhursts, and LS Lowry — as well as influential visitors such as Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano — the network invites critical conversations about art, literature, politics and social change. It also foregrounds the city’s early waves of migration and the diverse communities that laid the foundations for Manchester’s vibrant multicultural identity today.

For academics, this network is more than a space for historical inquiry: it is a place to connect the past to the present, to examine enduring questions of power, identity and belonging, and to show how nineteenth-century culture still resonates in Manchester and beyond.

Programme

Day	Time	Activity	Location	Summary
Tuesday 17th Oct	13:00	Activity name would go here	MMU	A summary of the activity would go here
Tuesday 17th Oct	15:00	The activity name would go here	MMU	A summary of the activity would go here
Wednesday 18th Oct	9:00	The activity name would go here	MMU	A summary of the activity would go here