When people interact with each other, or with technology, or when technologies interact, they produce or use a 'communication artefact'. Our key goal is to understand such interactions and artefacts in their social and technical contexts. But no single discipline can do this. So we have built an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research centre which analyses and evaluates the design, production, use and consumption of communication artefacts. This is the Communication and Computing Research Centre (CCRC). The centre is concerned with analysing the nature of effective communication, exploring the use and design of technology, and investigating research issues common to these areas of study.