A Sense of Place is an on-going research project that considers the past, present and future of the Cambridge Biomedical from the perspective of the people that live and work around it. It combines research with public engagement, working in partnership with local communities.
The Cambridge Biomedical Campus, brings together major medical, scientific, and commercial initiatives in one location on the southern fringe of Cambridge. It is the largest site of its type in Europe. Currently approximately 21,000 people work on the site and by 2030 this figure will have grown to 30,000. Further expansion is planned until 2050.
The growing campus is an expression of the global significance of contemporary life science and the huge emotional, political, and economic investment in its futures. It is the locus of developments that are one and the same time international (the rise of new life sciences, the promise of new drugs and treatments), national (NHS reform, government economic and scientific policy post-Brexit), and regional (the Oxford-Cambridge ARC).
The specifics of place are crucial to this: Cambridge is deemed to offer exceptional (perhaps unique) opportunities for life science researchers, funders, businesses, and investors to benefit from ‘co-location’. While the importance of the continued development of the CBC is usually discussed in regional, national and international terms, it has become a lightning-rod for concerns about the changing character of the areas around it and of the city of Cambridge as a whole.
Our project aims to enhance the local conversation about the growth of the campus and its future impacts. A key element of the use of on-the-move methods, walking through the site with groups of people and conducting walking interviews with key informants. As of September 2024 we have conducted ….
About the project
About us
Our project is supported by Anglia Ruskin University. We are social scientists who work in Cambridge and live close to the Biomedical Campus.
Dr David Skinner is Associate Professor of Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University. He has lived and worked in Cambridge for over thirty years. During his career has worked on a wide range of projects looking at social, scientific and technological change: topics include home computing; transport and planning; management information systems; equality, diversity and community engagement in the public services; and digital photography. In recent years David’s primary research interest has been in the social and political aspects of the new life sciences. He has published on genetics and identity, the changing politics of ‘race’ and science, police use of forensic DNA, and the practical, ethical and legal challenges of managing genetic data.
Dr Will Brown is Research Associate in Urban Systems and Carbon Reduction in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Will has a long running interest in spatial sociology. He has an MA in Urban Studies from the University of Amsterdam. He recently completed a PhD on systems engineering and smart cities.
Contact us
Project email: senseofplace@aru.ac.uk
David Skinner: david.skinner@aru.ac.uk
Will Brown: wghb2@eng.cam.ac.uk
