Centre overview
SPeiR is an interdisciplinary research centre dedicated to advancing research and public engagement by exploring the intricate relationships between people, place, storytelling, culture and creativity.
Our work spans cultural sectors and organisations, including the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) sector, heritage, tourism, folklore, customs, collections and curatorial practice. The Centre is particularly interested in uncovering hidden, overlooked, and underrepresented voices, as well as examining the role of the creative and cultural industries in shaping communities and identities. Engagement with digital technologies and innovation is a key theme, including research into digital literacies, digital knowledge production, and the evolving epistemologies of digital information.
Much, but by no means all, of this work is undertaken in northern contexts, reflecting both researchers鈥� interests and activities, as well as the wider strategic goals of the university:
- to build knowledge and scholarship through quality research into the cultural and creative sectors through the intersection between stories and place in the creative and cultural spheres, heritage and culture, in northern communities and beyond, using digital innovations and interactions.听
- to inform the development of resilient and sustainable creative and cultural industries, sectors and organisations through imaginative research projects, knowledge exchange activities, and public engagement.
- to facilitate interdisciplinary activities that address wider issues including methodological approaches, impacts on sectors and communities.
- to encourage and develop peer support groups, including supporting the next generation of researchers, including early - and mid-term career research and through our doctoral student community.
- to contribute positively to the community, and society more broadly, both in northern and wider contexts, through applied research and collaborative partnerships inside and outside academia.
Stories are wonderful; they unlock our past, teach us about our present, and help us navigate our future.
Themes
SPeiR has three themes:
- Stories & Places including digital heritage, placemaking, storytelling, dark tourism, hidden voices, northern communities. 听
- Creative & Cultural sectors, working with cultural heritage organisations and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sector.
- Digital Innovations & Interactions including augmented, immersive technologies, digital resilience in heritage, fashion, and creative sectors.
Our people
SPeiR is led by Professor Peter Reid and Dr Rachael Ironside. Peter鈥檚 work focuses on heritage and culture, and the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums sector. Rachael鈥檚 research explores storytelling, place, and dark heritage. It is supported by a wide group of members from across the university.听
Centre Leadership Team
Peter Reid
Professor
Rachael Ironside
Associate Professor
Funding, projects听& publications
Featured projects
Talking about prisons: an investigation into the social practices that inform visitor engagement in prison museums
Funding: January 2025 - 拢9,824, British Academy
This study explored the social practices that inform visitor engagement in prison museums. Adopting a conversation analysis methodology the social interaction of visitors, how they talk about and interact in the social and spatial environment, was investigated to explore how negotiation, interpretation and meaning is elicited within prison exhibitions.
Raban 400
Funding: May 2022 - 拢8,980, National Lottery Heritage Fund
The printed word revolutionised our world; it changed ideas, thinking and societies. Raban 400 marked the anniversary of printing coming to Aberdeen with the arrival of Edward Raban and his printing press. It explored his life and legacy.
Generative Artificial Intelligence Skills in Schools (GenAISiS project)
Funding: September 2024 - 拢31,967, UKRI
This project aims to partner with secondary school students to empirically explore responsible use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and co-create open educational resources, articulating their voices and enacting their experiences via fictitious cartoon stories and characters. widely disseminated via open online workshops.听
Featured publications
- Reid, P.H., & Mitchell, C.P. (2026). Raban Redux: a re-evaluation of the life and connections of Edward Raban. 听Northern Scotland, 17(1), 70-91. http://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2026.0341
听 - Ironside, R., Wyatt, B., Wight, C., Roitershtein, A., & vom Lehn, D. (2026). Social interaction and dark tourism in prison museums. Annals of Tourism Research, 116, 104102.听
- Pedersen, S. and Downey, E. 2025. A containment zone or a place of surveillance? Liminal spaces on Mumsnet during COVID-19. Gender, place and culture [online], 32(7), pages 993-1011. Available from: 听
Study opportunities
SPeiR hosts a number of PhD and MRes students exploring themes relevant to the centre.
Find out more about the research degrees available at 糖心vlog官网:
Impact & knowledge exchange
Case Studies
National Trust for Scotland
Dr Rachael Ironside鈥檚 research explores the intersection between dark tourism, storytelling and experience. This includes the investigation of ghost tourism as a form of place and heritage engagement. Recently, she has been working with the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) on a project to explore the opportunities and challenges of developing a ghost tourism strategy for the organisation. This included conducting a small-scale study in 2024-2025 of staff and visitors of NTS properties to explore these issues and to consider how ghost tourism could be developed in alignment with the organisation鈥檚 values. Her research identified four key pillars: rooted and authentic, educational and heritage-centric, collaborative and co-creative, and training and support. These pillars and subsequent report have been used by NTS to develop ghost tourism guidelines and an ongoing series of knowledge exchange activities.听
Imperial War Museum
Dr Ann-Marie Foster led the AHRC-funded 'Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures' project (2024-26), based at Imperial War Museums, which explored how digital heritage collections could be made more accessible to disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent collections users - logging in from the north or south! Ann-Marie also Co-Led the EDI-Caucus (UKRI and BA) funded 'Divergent Minds in the Archive' (2025), which focused on increasing access to archives and collections for neurodivergent professionals and users across the UK. At the heart of their work is the idea that archives and collections should be accessible to all, and we can work together to dismantle barriers and create opportunities for change.听听
鈥楥ulbin: the disappeared village鈥� event aimed to raise awareness of local histories and make long-term impact on cultural and heritage preservation work in Scotland.
Little Norway project set out to explore the stories of the Norwegian and Danish communities in Buckie and present the stories in an authentic, sensitive, and respectful fashion.
Stories come from people, places, landscapes, objects, and from a multitude of other sources. At their best, stories create a relationship between teller, audience, subject, time and place.
Read more StoriedPlace case studies
Partnerships & collaboration
Partnership and collaboration is at the heart of SPeiR. Working closely with organisations across the GLAM sector on funded and consultancy projects, addressing themes such as: digital storytelling, heritage interpretation, storytelling strategy, heritage accessibility, visitor studies, sustainability and community heritage.听
SPeiR also hosts the StoriedPlace tookit, designed to help organisations and community groups plan for place-based storytelling projects. Find out more about StoriedPlace, access to the toolkit or themed workshops:
Our partners
We engage with a variety of international partners:
National Trust
Our partnership with the National Trust for Scotland includes recent project work on the evaluation of ghost tourism across NTS properties and exploring opportunities for research into social interaction and visitor experience. Michael Terwey, Director of Public Engagement and Research at NTS, is also our first Visiting Research Fellow at SPeiR.
Cove Group
Our partnership with Cove Group builds on a British Academy funded project called Talking about Prisons (2024-25) which explored visitor interaction in Peterhead Prison Museum. Ongoing collaboration includes exhibition development with Dennis Law Legacy Trust's Club 10 programme, ghost tourism evaluation and further visitor interaction studies.
Denis Law Legacy Trust - Club 10
We have partnered with the Club 10 programme at Dennis Law Legacy Trust to explore interpretation approaches and exhibition development at Peterhead Prison Museum to communicate the experience and stories of hidden voices of incarceration.听
Scottish Library and Information Council
We have a long-established relation with Scottish Library and Information Council which is the Scottish Government's advisory body on libraries. A number of research projects have been funded through this partnership including the development of the national quality framework for public libraries in Scotland. How good is our public library service?
Imperial War Museum
Partnership includes an AHRC-funded 'Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures' project (2024-26), based at Imperial War Museums, and led by Dr Ann-Marie Foster.
Harris Tweed
Our researchers Karen Cross and Josie Stead have worked extensively with Harris Tweed through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) which looked at embedding sustainable practice and a culture of innovation-led design.
The Cabrach Trust
Our partnership with The Cabrach Trust included a consultancy project (2022-2023) to examine methodologies and interpretation approaches to cultural heritage stories in the Cabrach.
Museums and Galleries Scotland
Our collaboration with Museums and Galleries Scotland has included being part of Year of Scotland's Stories (2022) with our 'Culbin: the disappeared village' project, and also through engagements around intangible cultural heritage.
Opportunities for collaboration
At SPeiR, we welcome collaborations with academics, industry partners, policymakers, and entrepreneurs who share our commitment to advancing impactful research and practice. We also welcome discussions on potential projects and consultancy opportunities.听
Connect with us to transform knowledge into action!听
News & insights
News
Published: 21 January 2026
Rather than experiencing museum exhibits in isolation, visitors constantly look to one another to make sense of what they are seeing.
News
Published: 07 October 2025
A researcher from 糖心vlog官网 is working with colleagues from Nordic countries to support small coastal communities in developing and evaluating their sustainable tourism strategies.
News
Published: 31 July 2024
A research project is underway to help explore how people engage and deal with a range of challenging issues and 鈥榙ifficult heritage鈥�, all set within an eerie preserved prison setting.
Work with us
If you would like to partner with the centre or have any questions about our听research, please email: