Innovation Needs Curiosity. Heritage Science Delivers Both.

This follows on from my previous post, where I reflected on the value of the heritage sector in the UK, and the frustration that we have not been very good at communicating this value more broadly. This followed a UKRI board visit to the north east, where I was asked a question specifically about RICHeS (Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science) (which readers will know I am closely involved in, as director for NEMCAS, the north east node of the distributed infrastructure). It got me thinking, perhaps more urgently than I have before, about how crucial RICHeS is both as a programme for catalysing research, but as a tool for demonstrating the economic value of the heritage sector, consolidating what has historically been very dispersed, and making the case for continued investment in heritage, and arts and humanities, broadly defined.

If the first step is recognising that archaeology and heritage are a significant part of the UK economy, the next question is what we do with that recognition. How do we move from evidence to action? From contribution to strategy? From a sector that demonstrably matters, to one that is structurally embedded in how the UK thinks about growth, innovation, and research investment? This is where the AHRC RICHeS programme becomes particularly important. RICHeS represents something the heritage sector has historically lacked, that is a coherent research infrastructure. Not just funding, not just projects or equipment, but a system that connects facilities, expertise, data, and people across institutional and disciplinary boundaries.

This matters because one of the long-standing challenges facing archaeology and heritage has not been a lack of excellence, but a lack of visibility at scale. Expertise exists across universities, museums, commercial archaeology, and conservation science, but it is often fragmented. That fragmentation makes it harder to articulate a clear, national capability, even when that capability is globally leading.

RICHeS is beginning to change that. By linking distributed facilities into a coordinated system, it allows heritage science and archaeology to be understood not as isolated activities, but as part of a national asset base. That shift is precisely what is needed to engage meaningfully with the industrial strategy. The industrial strategy, after all, is not primarily about individual projects. It is about ecosystems, how capabilities are coordinated, how innovation is supported, and how economic and research systems reinforce one another. In that context, RICHeS provides a mechanism for positioning heritage as a fundamental part of the UK’s innovation infrastructure.

My hope is that the government, and UKRI, continue to invest across both innovation and blue skies research – they do not exist in isolation from each other. Innovation ecosystems do not emerge solely from targeted, near-term priorities. They depend on a foundation of curiosity-driven, blue skies enquiry, where ideas can develop without immediate application. We do not know where the next breakthrough will come from. RICHeS provides a structure in which this kind of research can thrive, while also connecting it to application and impact. It does not force a choice between ‘blue skies’ and ‘applied’ research; instead, it enables the two to coexist within the same system. That is exactly the balance that effective innovation policy requires, even if it is not always explicitly acknowledged. 

And let’s not forget, the people behind the research, and the innovation. While many of us do become motivated by the possibilities for innovation and its economic benefit, how many of us first became interested in science for this reason? Or was it that we were fascinated by the fundamentals? Take physics. what is the universe made of? Dark matter (invisible mass holding galaxies together) and dark energy (driving cosmic expansion) - we can measure their effects, but we don’t know what they are! The very core of who we are, our place in this universe that is still full of mystery. Astronomers studying distant galaxies, faint signals from space, cosmic radiation, were solving problems about detecting extremely weak signals. That fundamental research became the basis of more applied technology developments including CCD sensors which are now found in digital cameras, phones, telescopes. Trying to see distant galaxies helped us build the cameras in our pockets. 

Many of the technologies that now underpin the global economy originated in research that once seemed entirely abstract. Quantum mechanics, developed to understand the behaviour of atoms, ultimately gave rise to semiconductors and computing; Einstein’s theories of relativity, concerned with the nature of space and time, are now essential to GPS systems. These developments were not predictable at the outset, but they illustrate how curiosity-driven research underpins long-term innovation. Physics needs blue skies research, we accept that without question. Other areas such as heritage are no different.

The study of ancient diets and materials in archaeology and heritage science has driven the development of analytical techniques that are now applied in fields such as food provenance and fraud detection. For example, the development of biomolecular techniques to analyse ancient residues, pioneered by researchers such as Prof. Richard Evershed FRS, was originally aimed at answering highly specific questions about what people cooked and consumed in the past. In doing so, however, it led to the refinement of analytical methods capable of identifying complex and degraded chemical signatures. These same approaches are now used in areas such as food authentication and fraud detection, where similarly challenging mixtures must be analysed to verify provenance and composition. What began as an investigation into prehistoric diets has therefore contributed to tools that now support modern supply chains, illustrating how research driven by curiosity can produce applications that were neither anticipated nor immediately apparent.

By creating shared infrastructure and fostering collaboration across domains, RICHeS makes these connections more visible and more actionable. It allows heritage research to be understood as part of a wider landscape of scientific and technical capability, rather than as something adjacent to it. That, in turn, strengthens its position within national conversations about R&D investment and innovation.

Equally important is the programme’s alignment with place-based agendas. There is growing emphasis on regional growth and levelling up, recognising that economic and research capacity should not be concentrated in a small number of locations. Heritage is inherently rooted in place; it is tied to landscapes, buildings, and communities. Just look at the reaction when the Sycamore Gap tree was illegally felled – there was a huge outpouring of emotion around the loss of a UK heritage icon. It is one of many places in and around Hadrian’s Wall which are so closely linked to regional identity and how people connect to the place they live in. As a distributed infrastructure, RICHeS has the potential to support a place based agenda by enabling access to facilities and expertise across different regions. It strengthens regional research ecosystems, supports local economic activity, and helps ensure that heritage-led innovation is not confined to major metropolitan centres.

Programmes like RICHeS have the potential to make heritage more visible as part of national infrastructure, but we need to match that in how we communicate what we are and what we do. That means articulating value not only in cultural terms, but in terms of systems, investment, and long-term strategy, and ensuring heritage is part of wider conversations about innovation. Crucially, this is not about becoming something different. It is about recognising that the strengths of the humanities more broadly, working across disciplines, engaging deeply with material and cultural contexts, and thinking across long timescales, are precisely what make them vital within the innovation ecosystems we are trying to build.