Research centres

British School of Fashion

The British School of Fashion inspires and contributes to social change through research on inclusive, sustainable and purpose-driven luxury and fashion. Our London location facilitates strong links and support from industry including a number of Honorary Professors and industry experts including Patrick Grant, Christopher Raeburn and Jane Shepherdson.

Researchers at the British School of Fashion have produced a Bloomsbury Fashion Business case study collection based on their expertise in socially conscious fashion and sustainable luxury, in line with the Common Good.

The British School of Fashion regularly organises industry conferences on emerging innovations such as the Luxury Tech series exploring the use of technology to tackle environmental and sustainability challenges as well as exploring the evolving opportunities around NFTs, Metaverse and Virtual Humans.

Professor Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas is Principal Investigator of an interdisciplinary team of GCU London researchers including Professor Candace Currie, Dr Ana Roncha and Maher Anjum working with research and participation practitioners from Crafts Council, the UK’s national charity for craft. Together they were awarded a Collaborate research grant from the Centre for Cultural Value.

Collaborate supports innovative new partnerships between cultural sector practitioners and academics exploring underexplored questions around cultural value. Their project Disrupting the craft canon: the cultural value of craft takes a Living Lab approach to explore, develop and test measures of the cultural value and wellbeing attached to craft by racially minoritized communities who are excluded from the cultural space of craft.

GCU London Researchers Erica Charles and Dr Dane Lukic are working in collaboration with Dr Amy Benstead, University of Manchester and Dr Helen Goworek, Durham University on a Leverhulme-funded research project, which explores and expands on the impact of worker voice on the auditing and due diligence processes relating to modern slavery in the Leicester ready-made-garment (RMG) industry.

Sustainable Energy and Allied Disciplines (SEAD)

Sustainable Energy and Allied Disciplines (SEAD) aims to empower skilled individuals through teaching, research, capacity building and outreach programmes in engineering, environment, sustainability and allied disciplines using a holistic systems thinking/system dynamics (ST/SD) paradigm.

SEAD provides an avenue for professionals, institutions, industry and the general public to engage in training, knowledge discourse and exchange.

SEAD recognises the inherent complexity, non-linearity, feedback and delays associated with planning and policy formulation hence calls for the adoption of ST/SD in the pursuit of making informed and sustainable decisions.

PhD opportunities

Explore PhD and DBA opportunities and learn more about our supervisors' research expertise.

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Research centres

Learn more about our range of thematic inter-disciplinary research centres, underpinned by an inter-sectoral approach to addressing our Sustainable Development Goals.

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Our research environment

GCU London provides a supportive community that provides continuous support to our researchers as they progress in their chosen fields.

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PhD and DBA students

Learn more about our growing cohort of postgraduate research (PhD and DBA) students.

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