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The History Department at York has a long-standing commitment (embodied in the work of James Walvin, Simon Smith, Douglas Hamilton, Henrice Altink and Geoff Cubitt) to path-breaking research into the history and memory of transatlantic slavery. Our researchers have worked closely with museums and educational practitioners to establish a `virtuous circle' in which research: (i) influences the content of heritage and educational presentations; (ii) reflects on those presentations, gauging public response and prompting stakeholder debate; (iii) provides constructive feedback to museums and others. This impact case study shows how research by members of the Department has contributed to each stage of this process. Professor James Walvin's research publications from 1993 until his retirement in 2005 revealed how slavery has shaped the nature of contemporary British society, a body of work that significantly contributed to the slave trade's inclusion in the National Curriculum in 2008. In addition to his on-going record as an exhibition curator, historical advisor and commentator on slavery, he advised and helped create the York AHRC-funded `1807 Commemorated' project (2007-9), principle investigator Laurajane Smith (Archaeology) and co-investigator Geoff Cubitt; Data Management Group Walvin. This project helped heritage professionals and other stakeholders understand and analyse the extensive museum activity on slavery generated by the 2007 Bicentenary of the Act Abolishing the Slave Trade, and led to innovations in museum practice and new collaborative relationships within the sector.
Marcus Waithe has carried out research that has resulted in a web-based `reconstruction' of the St George's Museum, a gallery and library for artisans founded in Sheffield in 1875 by the art and social critic, John Ruskin. Impact can be demonstrated in four areas:
Beard, Osborne and Vout were invited in 2008 by the Keeper of Antiquities, Dr Lucilla Burn, to assist in re-displaying the Greek and Roman objects in the Fitzwilliam Museum, with the support of the AHRC. Through the reorganisation of the galleries, the arrangement of exhibits and accompanying written materials (labels, information boards, website), their research on museum display, Greek and Roman sculpture, Greek vase painting, and Greek and Roman epigraphy has been made accessible to the public and transformed (real and virtual) visitors' understanding of the manufacture, distribution, use, preservation and collection of the artefacts displayed. Visitors, students and professionals in museology have registered — positively — the distinctive nature of this re-display.
This research was initiated in 2003 in recognition of the neglect by museums and galleries across the UK of disability history, arts and culture. Before the research began, disabled people — comprising the UK's largest minority — were almost entirely absent from and/or misrepresented in the UK's cultural heritage institutions. Three distinct but sequential projects investigated this and, through a programme of action research:
- stimulated and supported experimentation in museum exhibition and learning practice in the UK and internationally, enabling museums and galleries to confidently engage visitors in debates surrounding disability, disability rights, hate crime and, more broadly, discrimination and societal attitudes towards physical and mental difference;
- developed new approaches to interpretation and audience engagement that have changed the ways in which general visitors and schoolchildren think about physical and mental differences and the rights and entitlements of disabled people;
- pioneered new approaches to museum practice that have informed policy and set standards for best practice not only in the UK but internationally.
The Exhibiting Europe project has generated change in the museum world with a pan-European reach. It has had significant impact on museum organizations, by helping them to improve their networking and lobbying activities; museum professionals, by suggesting ways to `transnationalize' their activities and historical narratives; and policy-makers in the cultural and museum field, by contributing to a high level policy dialogue with the European Parliament, the European Commission and EU member-states about ways to `narrate' Europe and European integration.
DU researchers have delivered their innovative model of participatory action research (PAR) with Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums Service (TWAM, a major regional museum service in the North east, comprising seven museums and galleries) to further social inclusion and deepen participation from socially marginalised groups. Research findings have led to: (1) enhanced income generation for TWAM, with bids citing DU research bringing in more than £0.5m at a time of shrinking resource for the museum sector; (2) the development of a major new museum gallery, which opened in July 2013; and (3) changes to professional practice consequent upon intensifying the practice of participatory working within TWAM.
Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine's research on mediating memory in the museum has influenced the development of permanent exhibitions on the German Democratic Republic (GDR) which have opened or been reworked in recent years. As part of two AHRC network projects (2009-10 and 2012-13) and as a member of the Raphael Samuel History Centre she has collaborated with museum practitioners to develop new curatorial and outreach practices including three German museums, the Imperial War Museum and a new east London heritage site. Drawing on her research she has advised several museums, which have taken on board a number of her suggestions when they modified their exhibitions.
Making Histories Visible produces visual art projects with internationally recognised museums and galleries, in which new artworks and installations activate institutional and curatorial policies to re-examine collections and collecting. By investigating the historic through the contemporary, using the mechanisms of display and interventions, youth centred workshops, symposia, web-sites and publications; we help museums find new relevance within contemporary society.
Thin Black Line(s) Tate Britain (2011/12), Cotton Global Threads Whitworth and Manchester Galleries (2011/2012), Jelly Mould Pavilions NML (2010), reflect collaborations and sustainable relationships with a wide, influential range of museum curators, directors and community leaders.
The case study demonstrates how research conducted by staff in the Centre for Museology has informed the development of innovative display and interpretation practices in public museums in the UK and overseas. It shows how applied critical and reflexive museology has been used in a range of curatorial contexts, thereby directly affecting institutional practice and, in turn, providing visitors and volunteers with new opportunities for engagement. The impact is evident in the curatorial process, involving both staff and stakeholders, and in critical responses from practitioners and policy-makers.
The history of exploration is central to public understanding of the purpose and making of geographical knowledge. It is often imagined as the work of exceptional individuals in extraordinary circumstances. Popular portrayals of exploration have long been cast as heroic individual dramas, in which the explorer is the central character. Historical geography research at Royal Holloway has challenged this way of thinking. It has emphasised exploration's wider cultural, economic and social significance, showing it to be a fundamentally collective experience, and making visible the vital roles played by local people and intermediaries. It has demonstrated too how the collections of major UK scientific societies and museums are shaped by and can communicate these histories of exploration. The key impacts of the research are therefore on: (1) the cultural understanding of geography and exploration, especially through public exhibitions and their secondary reach; (2) the development of heritage collections strategy in major institutions, notably at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (hereafter RGS-IBG).