Cathy Parker is Professor of Retail and Marketing Enterprise at Manchester Metropolitan University and Chair of the Institute of Place Management. Cathy is regarded as an international expert and leader in place management and is the research lead for the Government's High Streets Task Force. She is frequently asked to commentate on place and retail related topics, while she has contributed to many broadsheet articles on the high street.

Steve is a Professor in Place Management and a Director of the Institute of Place Management, Manchester Metropolitan University. Steve guides the Institute's work on place making and planning. He is a Trustee of the Manchester Geographical Society. Steve has also conducted academic research on lighting and public space, place and creativity, and place-making and football. Steve is currently the placemaking programme lead for the High Streets Task Force.

Gary Warnaby is Professor of Retailing and Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University, based in the department of Marketing, Retail and Tourism and the Institute of Place Management. He is a Senior Fellow of the IPM, where his role is research-focused, contributing to various projects for the IPM and the High Streets Task Force. His personal research interests focus on the marketing of places (particularly in an urban context), and retailing (specifically pop-up retailing). 

Alessandro Graciotti is a Research Associate at the Institute of Place Management, holding a PhD in Applied Research in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour from the University of Macerata, Italy. His research focuses on the relationship between communities, place, and food localness, as well as mobility and place making.

Mihalis Kavaratzis is Professor of Place Marketing (Manchester Metropolitan University) and holds a PhD on City Marketing. Mihalis is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Place Management and has co-founded the International Place Branding Association.

Afroditi is a research assistant at the Institute of Place Management. She works across different projects, including the government funded High Streets Task Force. Afroditi participates in the Developing Place Leaders (DPL) webinars and leads the DPL post-event reports. She is currently studying a PhD in regional economic development through tourism innovations and stakeholder participation.

Nikos Ntounis is Senior Research Associate at the IPM. He joined IPM in 2014 and has worked and contributed in numerous IPM projects such as High Street UK 2020 and Bringing Big Data to Small Users. He is responsible for research and project delivery, and the development of products and services related to ongoing IPM projects. He has contributed to several IPM reports including 'Markets Matter', 'Multifunctional Centres', and most recently 'High Street 2030: Achieving Change' report.

Michael is a Research Associate at the Institute of Place Management. He completed his PhD in History at the University of Essex where he focused on how different communities in Colchester used the town’s Civil War history to understand the contemporary world that they lived in, and how local stakeholders in the town used the past to reinvent Colchester throughout the last three centuries.

Gaz is IT Manager for the Institute of Place Management. He joined IPM in 2019 and will develop IPM's digital systems. With a background in web development and digital marketing, Gaz previously worked for Manchester Metropolitan’s marketing team, leading on the promotion of research and knowledge exchange output for the Faculty of Business and Law. Gary also has an MA in Sport History and Culture from De Montfort University.

Christian is an economist and data scientist with a passion for (and over 13 years' experience in) public policy, particularly local government finance and devolution, industrial strategy and urban economic development, specialising in using data analytics and visualisation tools to improve the public understanding of economics and economic data and to support policy-making and evaluation. He has worked in local government, think tanks, business and academia and in September 2022 found his own consultancy, Economic Analytics.

Dr Chloe Steadman is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a researcher at the Institute of Place Management. She has a PhD in consumer research from the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on consumer culture and people's lived experiences of places, as well as lecturing in consumer behaviour, research methods and being the Programme Leader of the Place Management and Leadership postgraduate courses.