The University of Northampton and De Montfort University are working together to analyse the use of social learning spaces within a Higher Education setting using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The group is intending to reproduce earlier work that mapped the university campuses to provide a comparative understanding of where students work and then interview students in situ to gather a rationale for their choice of space. These findings will then be developed to understand how narratives of learning spaces are constructed, the concept of identity in the selection of space and the notion of spaces such as the library holding an iconic status within centres of learning