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Focusing on the lives and works of Dickens and Tennyson, this case study demonstrates how a team of literary researchers at the University of Portsmouth has promoted public re-engagement with Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight's literary heritage. Their research on questions of celebrity and social marginality has been adapted and exploited to interpret and disseminate the region's cultural capital through public events, websites, and publications. Encouraging a fresh look at Dickens, Tennyson, and Victorian life, the impact of this research has increased public understanding of Victorian issues, and prompted local stakeholders to re-evaluate existing knowledge, policy and commercial practice.
The impact of Furneaux's research on Dickens is two-fold: she has enhanced public understanding of a major cultural icon, but also of the ways in which an earlier period may shape or challenge pressing social issues in our own time. Her work on gender, sexuality and domesticity has encouraged popular re-evaluations of Dickens's legacy, particularly his reputation as the eminent author of conservative `family values', and has informed audiences' perceptions of what constitutes a family both in Dickens's work and in the early 21st century.
During the 2012 Dickens bi-centenary alone, Furneaux engaged in dialogue with 25,000+ Dickens enthusiasts through projects including a Facebook reading group, a blog, a schools' resource, workshops and talks, and she presented new perspectives on Dickens in various media. Furneaux and her AHRC-funded CDA student, Catherine Malcolmson, have also worked closely with the Charles Dickens Museum (CDM) in generating income for the Museum and shaping its engagement with new audiences.
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has been credited with enabling a `reinvention' of biography. His studies of Charles Dickens and 19th century London have been communicated to a diverse audience in the UK and worldwide through his work as a biographer and an advisor on highly regarded TV adaptations of classic novels. His contributions to events marking the bicentenary of Dickens's birth include advising on BBC1's 3-part adaptation of Great Expectations (2011), assisting with sound historical and creative interpretation to support the film's educational, cultural and market value. Wider public understanding of the life and motivations of Dickens was achieved through various means including television and radio appearances, newspaper articles, blogs, podcasts, and public speaking engagements.
Birkbeck's Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (CNCS) has pioneered a reassessment of Victorian sentimentality, prompting the rethinking of a maligned cultural phenomenon. Its major impacts include contributions to understanding Dickens's life and writings, exemplified by the success of Dickens Day and Slater's publications; and two recent exhibitions. `Victorian Sentimentality' (commissioned by Tate Britain, 2012) and `Touching the Book: Embossed Literature for Blind People in the Nineteenth Century' (with the support of RNIB and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2013), illustrate how CNCS has played an influential role in re-shaping public understanding and reception of Victorian literary and visual culture.
John Bowen's research discoveries and arguments about the interaction of autobiography and fictionality in Dickens's writing challenge and extend scholarly perceptions of this major culturally iconic figure and provide the basis for bringing a new Dickens to 21st-century publics. He has used his research deliberately to shape the way Dickens is presented by key cultural institutions. Direct beneficiaries of his research have included the Dickens Universe, the British Library, the Museum of London and the media. He has worked with these institutions to ensure the wide UK, European and American reach of the impact of his research.
Researchers in Warwick's English Department have offered new perspectives on Britain's cultural and literary heritage by re-evaluating authors: both the very well-known (Dickens), the obscure (Charlotte Smith), and the otherwise forgotten (seventeenth-century women writers whose writing in manuscript would, without extensive archival recovery, be lost to view). The research has increased public understanding of Britain's rich literary history by inspiring new forms of traditional and digital art, public events and exhibitions, improved tourist information, and has led to the preservation and presentation of many literary artefacts through the creation of digital resources.
Research into contemporary women's writing that took place in the School of Cultural Studies and Humanities at Leeds Metropolitan University between 2000 and 2013 has contributed to the continuing personal and professional development of beneficiaries amongst the public, as well as postgraduate students significantly beyond the submitting HEI. The majority of these beneficiaries have engaged directly with this research in two ways: via the website (the Contemporary Women's Writing Association website, or its sister organisation the Postgraduate Contemporary Women's Writing Network website) or via a public lecture or event.
The impact of this case study is located in uncovering the contribution of Margaret Collier to the Anglo-Italian literary and cultural relations from Risorgimento to Resistance through her individual initiative as well as her legacy in the literary works and political commitment of her daughter, Giacinta Galletti, and grand-daughter, Joyce Salvadori. Impact is achieved through disseminating and promoting the understanding of this lesser-known intergenerational female legacy nationally and internationally through publications, conferences, and lectures in public domains; in translating texts previously available only in Italian; in broadening the knowledge of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literary communities in Italy; and in deepening the understanding of concepts of nationality, multiculturalism, migration, otherness and difference.
Since independence in 1991, Kyrgyz women's domestic felt textile practices have been exposed to the influences and expectations of the global market. Dr Bunn's research on the dynamics of continuity and change in Kyrgyz women's textile work has given Kyrgyz NGOs and craft organisations access to a wider global perspective and forum for their work. She has linked local textile practitioners with international craft organizations through organized exhibitions and showcases in the UK, thus increasing their international profile and earning income; supported their links with international agencies such as UNIFEM and UNESCO; and enabled the UK arts and research community to gain access to this little known art form. Advancements have thus been made in both individual lives, e.g. in £42,000 (equivalent to 35 average yearly wages) sales of 12 Kyrgyz artists' work, and more broadly in Kyrgyz women's craft initiatives through sustained cultural exposure.
`Threads of Feeling', a major exhibition of the textile tokens left with abandoned infants at the London Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, was curated and based on original research by Professor John Styles. Displayed at the London Foundling Museum in 2010-11, it received 19,132 visitors in six months. A permanent online presence from 2011 extended its reach, and when it travelled to the USA in 2013, a further 46,619 people saw it over two months. Its public popularity, enthusiastic critical reception and role in inspiring textile practitioners in particular have all ensured significant public awareness of this previously little known aspect of social history.