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Dr. Zoë Kinsley's research focuses on British home tour travel writing by women and a significant part of her work in that field has involved the study of manuscript travel journals held in libraries and county record offices, the majority of which had received little or no critical attention prior to her own research work. She has undertaken a series of public engagement activities within Greater Manchester and Yorkshire, focused on the manuscript writings of Dorothy Richardson and other women travelling in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which encourage greater use of and interest in local archive services, enrich understanding of local history in the North of England, and assist in the preservation of regional literary heritage. These events, all of which took the form of workshops which encouraged discussion and debate between participants, have taken place in partnership with Wigan Archives Service, Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, and the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
Professor Wendy Bracewell's collaborative, cross-disciplinary project focuses on Europe's limits and divisions as depicted and debated in East European travel writing from 1550 to the present day. The research she has led has had an impact in two distinct areas. In the anglophone West, and particularly in the UK, it has contributed to increased cross-cultural awareness and understanding, and influenced the development and delivery of public education. In eastern Europe, the research has raised the profile of this genre of writing amongst the public and amongst specialists.
Making a major contribution to English recovery research in the Unit, work associated with this case study has brought to a wider public:
1) the works of writers whose livelihoods were principally earned through manual labour or craft skills;
2) radical and neglected writing across a range of periods, genres and cultural contexts.
This has led to impact through enhancement of public understanding of literary and cultural value.
Underpinning research began in 1994; subsequently three principal routes to impact have evolved:
1) the development of open access online resources, in particular, `Labouring-Class Poets Online';
2) NTU publishing imprint, Trent Editions, which combines scholarly research with dissemination of neglected radical writing;
3) engagement with literary societies and related organizations.
The impact of Professor Nigel McLoughlin's work has two main, interrelated facets. The first is the public dissemination of his poetry through a variety of media, including mass media. His work takes the Irish troubles as a main context, and addresses themes of violence, invasion, identity, belonging, and tradition. He has published widely and has been invited to perform his work to public audiences at numerous literary festivals. The second is his academic research into pedagogy and poetics. Here his academic work examines the creative process and principles of making poems and his research reflects how one can explore and teach the various textual, musical, rhythmic, formal and thematic considerations of poetry. His own poetry bears out this reflective relation to expressivity through its perpetual experiments with formal and musical considerations, imagery and the relationship of the poetic whole to multi-sensory images and embodied thought.
Bradford's exploration of the lives of modern British writers demonstrates how research can cross over into audiences beyond specialist academic markets. The impact of his research lies in:
The Military Writing Network (MWN) was founded in 2009 by Siobhan Campbell, Principal Lecturer in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Kingston University London. Drawing on research by Professor Rachel Cusk, Dr. Meg Jensen and Professor Vesna Goldsworthy into the interface between testimony, trauma literature, autobiographical fiction and recovery from trauma and related disorders, the MWN created and sustains partnerships with organisations working with veteran soldiers, sailors and airmen and their families toward investigating how creative writing practice can help them cope with issues relating to combat stress, both inside and outside mental health environments.
Editorial and biographical research on the work of Virginia Woolf, carried out primarily by Susan Sellers, fed directly into the composition of Vanessa and Virginia, a novel by Sellers about Woolf's relationship with her sister. In 2008 Vanessa and Virginia was published by a small independent publisher set up in 2006 in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. It became the press's most commercially successful publication and ensured its early economic viability. The novel was subsequently published in North America and translated into more than a dozen languages. It was also turned into a successful, inter-nationally-staged play. This case study therefore claims several types of impact: (1) exporting the cultural heritage of the UK and stimulating international public interest in Woolf; (2) generating economic prosperity for a small entrepreneurial business in a remote part of Scotland, and for the creative industries (theatre and international publishing) more widely; (3) inspiring and facilitating the work of other cultural practitioners; (4) enriching cultural life in the UK and abroad. The users of this research are: the directors of an independent publishing company; translators and international publishing houses; the director, producer and actors of a touring theatre company; the reading and theatre-going public.
This study addresses the impact of researchers in the Writing and Environment Research Centre who have pioneered the `environmental humanities', contributing to public debate in a field of acknowledged political and cultural importance. Neale's work has been used by trade unions in the UK and overseas. Garrard's book is used in HEIs in the UK and abroad. Evans reaches public audiences with his BBC radio work and Guardian column; Kerridge with literary nature writing. Kerridge and Garrard have influenced the teaching of ecocriticism in numerous universities. Collectively, the centre contributes to public awareness of the cultural aspects of environmental questions.
Tessa Hadley's, novels and stories have reached a public audience, been listed for prizes, and led to prominent literary journalism, public debate, and appointments to prize-awarding panels. Hadley's work is an example of the cultural and economic impact of the Creative Writing research community at BSU, which includes novelists, poets, dramatists and non-fiction writers, who have reached public audiences, contributed to public literary culture through journalism, broadcasting and award-judging, and contributed to the economic viability of publishing and related industries. Hadley exemplifies the strategy of using the research base to enhance the quality of published creative writing and literary debate.
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.