Summary of the impact

This case study demonstrates sustained impact on UK government and devolved government policy in the area of creative digital participation; on the regional implementation of that policy; on publicly funded community initiatives that benefited from that implementation; and on the NI school curriculum. It will also outline the beginnings of similar impact on an international scale: on government education policy and school and university curricula in, for example, Namibia and South Africa, where the underpinning research has been disseminated.

Summary of the impact

The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project was designed to have a range of public impacts since its inception and this case study focuses especially on the following three overlapping impacts: 1) It has enriched cultural life by recording, preserving and publishing free online the corpus of local place-names, and 2) has enhanced public understanding of aspects of language and history as preserved in these names. In particular, 3) it has impacted on civil society by creating space in which linguistic and cultural diversity can be encountered in an inclusive manner, and by illuminating the depth of connection between place and people across the range of historically diverse ethnic groups.

Summary of the impact

The research:

• Has considerably enhanced understanding of the forces at play in a society coming out of conflict;
• Has especially enhanced understanding of the role that the media, both in their formal structures and in their more diverse forms, have played and can play in promoting reconciliation and understanding;
• Has devised means and strategies to include previously excluded communities in the process of reconciliation;
• Has helped communities deeply affected by the conflict to tell their own stories and to share their own experiences of trauma, loss and reconciliation through use of the media;
• Has had an impact on post-conflict research internationally and has influenced approaches in other conflict cultures.