The Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of York, established in 2006.
The institute works as an outward-facing body to create a sustainable network of partnerships between the academic environment and those working in museums and galleries, other heritage practitioners, and media professionals.
IPUP is based on the University of York's main Heslington campus, Vanbrugh College.
Its director in 2015-2016, is Dr. Geoff Cubitt, a reader in the Department of History, whose research interests are in social memory and in the political, social and cultural aspects of relationships to the past in modern societies more generally.
2012-2015 Professor Sarah Rees Jones, a medievalist and specialist in the history of York.