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Sinclair

Summary of the impact

Professor Sinclair's project on `Wrongdoing in Spain 1800-1936' explores the difference between cultural representations of wrongdoing and their underlying realities, and includes the digitization and cataloguing of c4500 items of popular Spanish material held at the University Library, Cambridge (UL), and the British Library (BL). This contributes significantly to the conservation, stewardship, and enhanced accessibility of this ephemeral material, increasingly valued and recognized as important in Spain as part of its social history and heritage. Digitization also makes this fragile material available to support teaching. An exhibition of this material and comparable material in English runs at the UL, Cambridge April — December 2013, strongly supported by a virtual exhibition. Public engagement events extend the understanding of the relevance of this material to modern Britain.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Modern Languages and Linguistics

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Summary of the impact

Public understanding of the national past has been expanded by the creation, updating, and widespread use of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). It is the most comprehensive biographical reference work in the English language and includes (in May 2013) biographies of 58,661 people over two millennia. The ODNB is the `national record' of those who have shaped the British past, and disseminates knowledge while also prompting and enhancing public debate. The Dictionary informs teaching and research in HEIs worldwide, and is used routinely by family and local historians, public librarians, archivists, museum and gallery curators, schools, broadcasters, and journalists. The wider cultural benefit of this fundamental research resource has been advanced by a programme of online public engagement.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

History

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration, Political Science
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Blake and physiognomy: ways of seeing (the body) in text and image

Summary of the impact

There are two ways in which Erle's research on William Blake, Physiognomy and text-image relationships have achieved public impact. First, a display and a Scholar's Morning on "Blake and Physiognomy" at Tate Britain (2010-11) and there were also invitations to give public lectures for "Haus der Romantik", a Literature Museum specialising on Romanticism in Marburg (Germany) and for the Blake Society, a London-based but international organisation of Blake scholars and enthusiasts. Second, an online-exhibition on Lord Alfred Tennyson's copy of Blake's Job for the Tennyson Research Centre (2012-13) and a display on Blake, Tennyson and Anne Gilchrist in Lincoln Public Library.

Submitting Institution

Bishop Grosseteste University

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

‘Connecting Cornwall: Telecommunications, Work and Locality in West Britain, 1870-1918’

Summary of the impact

Dr Richard Noakes led `Connecting Cornwall', a project working with the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum (PTM) from February 2009 - July 2012, looking at the lives and careers of the `ordinary' men who operated the Victorian and Edwardian British submarine cable network.

The project was fundamental in building a working relationship with PTM that now paves the way for future research-based collaborations. The exhibition also raised the profile of PTM. A new section of the website was created for PTM, greatly improving its online presence and user experience. Impacts on the public have included providing access to previously unseen archival material, preserving and displaying artefacts of cultural heritage and in educating people with regards to their local history.

Submitting Institution

University of Exeter

Unit of Assessment

History

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Transforming access to, and raising awareness of the Penguin Archive

Summary of the impact

The Penguin Archive Project, funded by a major grant from the AHRC [7], produced an online catalogue of the Penguin Collection at the University of Bristol Library (launched in 2011). Penguin Books transformed the range and greatly extended the availability of books to a general readership in the twentieth century. The Penguin Archive located at the University of Bristol can therefore be conceived of as a record of the democratisation of reading in the UK in the twentieth century. As a result of the Penguin Archive Project impact has been realised in three main areas: improving access to the Penguin Archive and making it easier to use for a variety of non-academic users; raising awareness and understanding of the significance of the archive and the rich cultural heritage of Penguin books through public engagement and media activities including a major international conference in 2010; developing collaborative links with Penguin and contributing to their publishing practice. As a result, researchers, editors, authors, publishers and other users such as the Penguin Collectors Society now have access to this major resource.

Submitting Institution

University of Bristol

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration
Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Enhancing Public Understandings of Science through Creative Writing

Summary of the impact

The present case study focuses on a group of creative writers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) whose work has had a significant impact on the public understanding of contemporary and historical science. These writers continue in a long British tradition of robust and informed literary investigation of science in public discourse, a tradition stretching from Mary Shelley to Ian McEwan. The works in question, which include prizewinning and best-selling fiction and non-fiction, interpret and stimulate engagement with specific areas and aspects of scientific practice, both past and present, further influencing international public debate through the involvement of the respective authors in the mainstream media and in related public events.

Submitting Institution

University of East Anglia

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

Melville

Summary of the impact

Research on the Shahnama and the Cambridge `Shahnama Project' have stood at the head of a wider effort to promote a better understanding of Persian culture in Britain and the West, especially in view of the current negative image of Iran and its clerical regime. The impact has been (1) to enhance heritage activity in Iranian diaspora communities in the UK and elsewhere; (2) create a focus and catalyst for raising awareness amongst the wider British public of Persian culture and history, and of past relations between Britain and Iran; and (3) inspire and support new forms of artistic expression.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Area Studies

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Philosophy and Religious Studies: Religion and Religious Studies

Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies: research benefiting an independent library and its users

Summary of the impact

The Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies, a collaboration between the Queen Mary English Department and Dr Williams's Library, Gordon Square, London, has undertaken a long-term and ongoing programme of funded research projects, public engagement events, and publications in print and online. Dr Williams's Library is a non-HEI (owned by Dr Williams's Trust, Charity number 214926) dedicated to the preservation and study of collections related to the history of Protestant dissent. Prof Isabel Rivers (QMUL 2004-), and Dr David Wykes, Director of the Library, founded the Centre in 2004 because of their mutual interest in the field. The work of the Centre's Queen Mary researchers, including publications hosted on the Centre's website, has enhanced the public profile of the Library, improved its accessibility to the wider public, and transformed the public understanding of the history of Protestant dissent.

Submitting Institution

Queen Mary, University of London

Unit of Assessment

English Language and Literature

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Information and Computing Sciences: Library and Information Studies
Language, Communication and Culture: Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

General public, teachers, students and carers benefit from deeper understanding of Buddhist practice

Summary of the impact

Buddhists and non-Buddhists across the world, educators, students and chaplains are among those who have benefited personally, academically and professionally from the imaginative dissemination of Bristol's pioneering research into Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China. Exhibitions, talks, printed and online learning materials, image archives and websites have all been brought into play. These multiple approaches to the sharing of new knowledge have led to beneficial impacts on a wide variety of individuals, from schoolchildren on the brink of adulthood to people receiving comfort on their deathbed.

Submitting Institution

University of Bristol

Unit of Assessment

Theology and Religious Studies

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies
Philosophy and Religious Studies: Religion and Religious Studies

Fifteenth-Century England

Summary of the impact

The Wars of the Roses and Richard III remain engrossing and controversial after 500 years throughout the Anglophone world and beyond. Hicks and Holford have made a significant impact on public knowledge and understanding of the period's politics and society. Their publications, printed and online, are valuable resources for professional and amateur historians, students and the general public, nationally and internationally. Hicks' Anne Neville underpinned Philippa Gregory's novel, The Kingmaker's Daughter and hence the BBC series The White Queen. The website, blog and twitter, Mapping the Medieval Countryside, are making the inquisitions post mortem (IPMs) much more widely accessible and useful than hitherto.

Submitting Institution

University of Winchester

Unit of Assessment

History

Summary Impact Type

Cultural

Research Subject Area(s)

Language, Communication and Culture: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies
History and Archaeology: Historical Studies

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