Research project

Mansbridge

Project overview

This project collaborates with Abri Housing Association to co-produce creative workshops and baseline data to capture what residents feel, understand and experience about Mansbridge, a suburb of Southampton known for its generous green spaces, striking layout, and distinctive style of housing. The architect Herbert Collins designed the estate with Swaythling Housing Society, and 2025 marks the centenary of its development. We co-created a public event to celebrate the history of the area with the local community, providing analysis of three key themes across the programme: pride, heritage literacy, and place perception.

Staff

Lead researchers

Professor Joanna Sofaer

Professor of Archaeology
Research interests
  • The role of cultural and community assets in health and wellbeing
  • The relationship between heritage and wellbeing
  • The social value of archaeology 
Connect with Joanna

Other researchers

Dr Joseph Owen

Research Fellow
Research interests
  • Culture and heritage in place-- using creative methods to understand local identities
  • Arts and humanities approaches to policy-- using theory and practice to challenge orthodoxies
  • Modernist art and literature-- Wyndham Lewis, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Samuel Be…
Connect with Joseph

Mr Isaac Fravashi

Research interests
  • Collage aesthetics in literature
  • Experimental literature
  • Approaches to authorship
Connect with Isaac

Collaborating research institutes, centres and groups

Research outputs