IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

UK universities have historically served as anchors for economic growth, cultural vitality, and social progress within cities. However, increasing financial pressures and global competition are shifting priorities away from these traditional roles toward attracting high fee-paying international students, raising concerns about their responsiveness to local challenges. This paper investigates whether research outputs from UK universities align with the socio-economic needs of surrounding communities, contributing to debates on their role in local development. Using publications submitted to the UK’s two most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessments as a proxy for institutional research priorities, publication metadata (e.g., research topics) are retrieved via the OpenAlex API and compared against local deprivation indicators from the English Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). Isochrones generated in GIS define travel-time catchments around each university, creating spatial boundaries for analysis. A controlled vocabulary for IMD sub-domains (e.g., health, education, housing) is developed, and AI-based semantic similarity models match these themes to publication topics, followed by manual validation. This process enables a systematic comparison of research priorities with local deprivation patterns. While a university’s research is assessed nationally through frameworks such as REF, less attention is paid to whether publications deemed “excellent” address local challenges. By integrating open publication data with spatial analytics, this study offers a novel framework for evaluating the alignment between research agendas and community needs. Furthermore, it responds to UKRI’s call that “research must contribute to thriving places and communities,” informing debates on the role of higher education in shaping inclusive and sustainable urban futures.