Log in
This case study concerns the impact of a major translation and publishing project unique in its scale and ambition. The surviving ancient Greek commentaries on Aristotle were published in a series titled Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (ed. Diels, 1882-1909). This made the texts available to readers of ancient Greek, but their length and technical nature meant that even classically trained scholars made rather sparing use of the commentaries. The Ancient Commentators Project was initiated in 1987 in order to translate these texts into English. The project has now succeeded beyond all original expectations. The 100th volume was published in December 2012, and nearly the entire corpus of late antique commentaries is now available in English.
By making the commentaries accessible to a vastly increased audience, the project has made a contribution to the preservation and presentation of our cultural heritage. This impact has been felt especially in the field of education: the availability of these primary sources has influenced deeply and widely the design and delivery of curricula of ancient and medieval philosophy at HEIs internationally.
Diogenes, created solely by Peter Heslin, is a freely distributed, open-source programme which enables access to all the major databases of classical Greek and Latin texts that have been in public circulation since the mid 1980s. Diogenes has had a significant and lasting impact on the education and cultural life of many of its tens of thousands of users. Some of these are professional classicists, who utilize it for both research and teaching. But a much larger part of the user population consists of students and non-academic readers of ancient Greek and Latin. Diogenes makes available to them the whole corpus of classical literature in the original languages. It also provides integrated morphological tools and lexica to support the needs of both language learners and more advanced readers. Diogenes has also had a significant and enduring impact on the movement towards open access publishing of digital resources for classics worldwide.
Papyrological research since 1993 by Oxford scholars has led to important new discoveries that have promoted increased public understanding and discussion of ancient literature and history. Research on documentary papyri has led to greater awareness of daily life in Oxyrhynchus, a Graeco-Roman provincial capital in central Egypt. The publication and translation of a new poem by Sappho has led to its inclusion in new translations of Sappho and ancient Greek lyric by leading publishers. Major Digital Humanities projects, Oxyrhynchus Online and Ancient Lives, have made the Oxyrhynchus papyri available to the public through the use of a web interface. Mass participation facilitated by the project has received wide publicity for increasing the engagement of the public with the methods and materials of scientific research. The website has had a major pedagogical impact through its use in schools.
Public understanding of the classical world has been informed and enhanced through new editions of the prestigious and internationally acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD) and its spin-off publications. These key reference items, which have sold in high numbers and been translated into several languages, are available in specialist, university, college and public libraries worldwide, thereby benefitting a wide range of users, including the general public, students, school pupils, and fellow professionals.
Research on the historian Herodotus, the history of the Achaemenid Persian empire, and the complex relationship between Greek and Persian worlds in the Classical period has had an impact in two main ways:
Research undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM) highlights how limited resources and poor coordination at the heart of the Greek government (the core executive) have circumscribed Prime Ministerial authority and severely hampered the ability of successive governments to develop and implement policy. This issue is particularly pressing, as many of Greece's recent economic woes can be attributed to this weak `reform capacity'. The research had a direct impact by changing party policy and informing the drafting of two new laws on restructuring the Greek core executive, in 2011 and 2013 respectively. These changes have survived the turnover of two different governments. Research findings have also been given extra impetus, with the strengthening of the Greek core executive identified in 2012 as a key priority by Greece's international creditors — namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB).
Research by the University of Reading's Department of Typography & Graphic Communication into the historical development of world scripts (predominantly South and Southeast Asian and Greek) and their adaptation to new technologies has had significant impact on global companies, including Adobe and Microsoft, supporting the use of non-Latin typefaces in their products as they enter new markets. The research has had additional impact on international type designers and manufacturers, Dalton Maag and Monotype, and on leading publishers such as Cambridge University Press and Brill.
Commercial uptake of the research brings global societal benefits, with millions of people seeing typefaces in print and on digital displays that represent their scripts with linguistic, historic and typographic integrity.
Following on earlier research which re-examined the construction of modern Greece, in 2008-12 Beaton researched the contribution of Byron (and Romanticism) to the creation of the Greek nation-state in the early 19th century, and has published the results in his 2013 book (3.4). The principal impact of Beaton's researches has been to challenge traditional Greek cultural and social assumptions about the continuity of their national identity from the ancient world. The main pathway is his distinctive contribution to the 200-year Greek debate about their national identity which has been intensified by the current socio-economic crisis. The principal beneficiaries are the Greek people, as reflected in public discourse in their mass media, and the non-Greek public interested in these issues. Other nascent beneficiaries are the worldwide community of Byron enthusiasts through cultural enrichment in their knowledge and understanding of Byron's role in creating modern Greece.
Research at Newcastle has been instrumental in developing an internationally recognised research collection of ancient Greek and Etruscan artefacts. Research insights directly influenced how the Shefton Gallery was presented in the Great North Museum: Hancock (GNM), and in particular informed the labelling and interpretation of the objects. By adding meaning and context to the artefacts, the research thus enabled museum staff to: i) deliver public lectures on the research collection thereby resulting in loans to national and international museums; and ii) develop educational resources and events (including worksheets, workshops and object loan boxes) to support innovative teaching in schools and universities. The research has therefore informed the understanding of the Ancient Greek and Etruscan past of the hundreds of thousands of visitors who visit the GNM annually as well as thousands of school-age children and students.
2011 was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, one of the most significant documents in the history of the English language. In 2010, Professor Gordon Campbell published a monograph on the history of the KJV and an edition of the 1611 text. These two books played a central role in the process whereby the KJV moved from being the private possession of believers and students of literature and achieved renewed significance as the cultural property of the wider Anglophone world. In England, the KJV became the property of school children when the British government bought 21,144 copies of Campbell's edition of the Bible, and presented a copy to every primary and secondary school in the country. Campbell's books generated income that ran well into six figures, and an extensive series of lectures and discussions have deepened understanding of the KJV throughout the world.