UCL and the National Trust have a history of cross disciplinary collaborations, from high level research to informal teaching sessions.
From June 2021, we entered a new phase of the institutional Strategic Partnership, offering opportunities to collaborate on shared research ambitions and draw on our world-leading fields of expertise and resources. The National Trust offers research partnerships, heritage sector knowledge and access across its heritage sites (historic properties and natural environments) while UCL’s knowledge and expertise can help the National Trust deliver their strategy, develop staff research capacity and develop joint-funded projects. The goal of the Partnership aims to address critical, public-facing research agendas across cultural heritage and the environment.
Our work
This exciting five-year initiative offers opportunities to:
- Collaborate on activities focussed in the discipline of heritage studies (including heritage science), aligning with the ‘Looking after’ pillar of the National Trust's strategic framework for research.
- Focus on providing opportunities for joint research, knowledge exchange, and supporting the development of the next generation of heritage professionals.
- Explore ways to collaborate generally in the development of joint and respective research interests relating to heritage, training and professional development.
Research
The partnership focuses on three sustainable heritage themes aligned with the National Trust Strategic Framework for Research:

Adapting to Change in the Anthropocene
Supporting projects to better understand various, complex and changing forces, from socio-cultural to economic and environmental that affect heritage across a range of time frames from short to very long term. This theme supports future resilience through effective evidence gathering and improved foresight, planning and the development of adaptable management strategies and tools.
Image: Wreck of the Yankee at Blakeney Point, Norfolk | ©National Trust Images/Rob Coleman

Connecting People with Heritage for Health and Wellbeing
Supporting projects to help us understand the contribution which cultural heritage can make to individual and community health and wellbeing. How can greater public benefit be enabled – physical accessibility to interpretation, community participation and programming – measured, and successful interventions shared?
Image: Dogs welcome at Attingham Park, Shropshire | ©National Trust Images/Annapurna Mellor

Techniques and Practices of Care
Supporting projects that explore the expansion of conservation practices to include creative and artistic interventions, new material and craft practices and communities, and a wide range of social, digital, heritage science, modelling and other research techniques and practices.
Image: A volunteer cleaning windows at Little Moreton Hall, Cheshire | ©National Trust Images/John Millar
Activities
- Small grant funded projects
- Multidisciplinary knowledge-exchange programme
- Policy placements
- The development of an innovation network
- Knowledge transfer partnerships
- Joint research funding bids and studentships
- Connecting researchers and expertise across the organisations, and mapping existing collaborations as a mutual resource
UCL academic and secondment spotlights

Professor Rodney Harrison on UCL’s new partnership with the National Trust
Rodney Harrison, Professor of Heritage Studies, shares his experience of working with the National Trust and highlights opportunities coming up as a result of the new UCL partnership.

Sarah Wolferstan on her research secondment with the National Trust
Sarah Wolferstan, Project Manager at UCL’s Centre for Applied Archaeology, shares her experience of working at the National Trust as part of UCL’s strategic partnership.
Working Together
Supporting regular UCL-NT Strategic Partnership meetings, the UCL Steering Group is chaired by Professor Jennifer Hudson (Dean for the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences and comprises representatives from anthropology, archaeology, heritage and conservation science, art history and the built environment.
UCL members on the Joint Steering Group
- Chair: Jennifer Hudson (Social & Historical Sciences)
- Kalliopi Fouseki (Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources)
- Haidy Geismar (Anthropology, Director of the School for the Creative and Cultural Industries)
- Steven Gray (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis)
- Rodney Harrison (Institute of Archaeology and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies)
- Alison Wright (History of Art)
- Kristina Glushkova (Innovation & Enterprise, Creative Sectors)
National Trust Partner members on the Joint Steering Group
- Chair: Anita Weatherby (Head of Research)
- Ingrid Samuel (Placemaking and Heritage Director)
- Tom Dommett (Head of Historic Environment)
- Nigel Blades (Head of Conservation, Collections & Interiors)
- John Orna-Ornstein (Director of Curation and Experience)
- Nicola Froggatt (Research Manager)
- Catherine Speight (Postdoctoral Research Fellow)