The Image Research Network

2019 Conference Partner

Based in the heart of Manchester, a vibrant and multicultural city, Manchester School if Art is an innovator of art and design education in the UK, and celebrated their 175th anniversary in 2013. As the second oldest design school in Britain, established to provide design training to the manufacturing industry, they offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses that are still very much influenced by the specialist needs of industry to provide our students with the essential skills and knowledge for their chosen career.

2018 Conference Partner

In 1956, Hong Kong Baptist College was founded by the Baptist Convention of Hong Kong as a post-secondary college committed to the provision of whole person education. In 1983, Hong Kong Baptist College became a fully-funded public tertiary institution. It gained university status in 1994 and was renamed Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).

Today HKBU encompasses eight Faculties/Schools offering a range of undergraduate programmes, associate degree and higher diploma programmes as well as taught postgraduate programmes and research postgraduate programmes leading to the award of master and doctoral degrees. It prides itself on its dual focus on teaching and research and encourages service to society among its staff and students. Over the years, HKBU has remained committed to academic excellence and the development of the whole person, and has gained a reputation as one of Asia’s finest institutions of higher learning.

2017 Conference Partner

Venice International University is something unique in the academic world: a group of Universities from all over the world sharing a common campus on the beautiful Island of San Servolo, in the Venice lagoon. These Universities devise study programs collegially to prepare their students to face the global challenges of today:

• sustainable development;
• climate change;
• ageing;
• urban growth;
• global ethics;
• cultural heritage...

These global issues require a new kind of academic preparation. Students who choose to spend a term studying at VIU are taught to move across disciplines and through cultures with a flexibility of approach, an open mind and creative thinking.

2016 Conference Partner

The Institute of Cultural Capital (ICC) is a strategic collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) which aims to influence policy by informing debate on the value of cultural interventions.

We are an academic research institute and our research aims to consider a cultural society for all, shifting the general perception that ‘culture’ is simply about ideas and artifacts, or venues and performances, but is more about everything we do together.

We achieve these goals by working in collaboration with researchers, academics, and consultants to develop multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches which examine cultural policy, strategies, and interventions from various perspectives.

The work of the ICC builds upon Impacts 08, a major longitudinal cultural research programme established to investigate the socio-economic impacts of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture (ECoC) year. The collaborative research model developed by the programme is now celebrated as best practice for the evaluation of large-scale arts and cultural programmes, and Impacts 08 / ICC colleagues have worked with international ECoC networks to embed systematic evaluation research policies and practices in the ECoC programme, as well as other major cultural events.

The ICC represents a significant portfolio of arts and cultural research and academic centres of excellence within the city, including the Liverpool School of Art and Design at LJMU and the Departments and Schools of Sociology, Civic Design, Management, Architecture, Philosophy, English, and Communication at the University of Liverpool. We are also closely linked to the Centre for Health, Arts, and Sciences and other research centres which complement our work, including the Centre for Architecture and the Visual Arts (CAVA), the Institute of Popular Music, and the Health Inequalities Research Institute, all of which are based at the University of Liverpool.

Since our inception in 2010, we have collaborated with organisations such as Mersey Care NHS Trust, DHA Communications, the University of Birmingham, City University London, the University of the West of Scotland, Universidad de Deusto, and the European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres (ENCACT); and have carried out research with or on behalf of organisations such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, the European Parliament, National Museums Liverpool, the London 2012 Organising Committee, English Heritage, and Creative Scotland.

2016 Supporting Partner

ABOUT

Face Lab is a Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University research group based in Liverpool Science Park that carries out forensic/archaeological research and consultancy work, including craniofacial analysis, facial depiction, and forensic art. Craniofacial analysis involves the depiction and identification of unknown bodies for forensic investigation or historical figures for archaeological interpretation. This may involve post-mortem depiction, facial reconstruction, craniofacial superimposition, and skull reassembly. Forensic art also involves witness interviews to produce facial sketches/composites, age progression images, and facial image comparison. Director Professor Caroline Wilkinson is accredited as a forensic anthropologist

Level I (craniofacial specialism) by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) and is an experienced forensic practitioner.

RESEARCH

Face Lab research relates to CCTV identification, preserved bodies, ancestry determination, craniofacial reconstruction, facial animation, and post-mortem decomposition