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Impact: Public engagement: interactive demonstrations of human cognition on BBC web pages completed by 251,757 people since 2008.
Significance: The involvement of massive numbers of the public who, by successfully completing on-line tests, acquired an understanding of cognition and memory.
Beneficiaries: The public.
Attribution: As a result of his published research on human cognition at the University of Edinburgh from 2004, the BBC invited Professor Robert Logie to develop interactive demonstrations for the public.
Reach: Worldwide: 251,757 people from 150 countries. Media coverage, two Reader's Digest books (2011 and 2012) and exhibits in a major new science exhibition, launched 2013.
Memory Maps is an online archive of writings and images inspired by East Anglia and especially Essex. The project explores people's relationship with place. It seeks to alter public perceptions of the region and to foster ecological awareness of the natural and the made environment. Developed by Essex literature academics in collaboration with The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Memory Maps project has successfully stimulated amateurs and professionals to practise the genre of psycho-geographical writing. The team has also promoted the project to a wide general audience through public symposia, book festivals, and contributions to international media including a feature-length documentary.
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.
Research undertaken in the School of English into the interrelations between memory, trauma, and narrative led to the `Storying Sheffield' project, which gives a voice to a diverse range of people, including long-term users of mental health services, people with physical disabilities, older people with degenerative conditions, migrants, and people in areas of socio-economic disadvantage. This has had significant socio-cultural impact for its participants, who have benefitted from an increased sense of well-being and belonging. There are also benefits for the wider community, through increasing understanding of these often marginalised sectors of society. In addition, the project has impacted on policy-making, through collaborations with Sheffield City Council, and emergency service providers, and on therapeutic training and practice, through collaborations with Rampton Hospital (a secure unit) and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Trust.