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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.
Dr. Elena Isayev has led three projects, drawing on the implications of historical research, in collaboration with art practitioners, to engage young people, minority and disaffected groups in shared reflection and creative activity. These projects, centred on the paradoxical idea of Future Memory, have been used to create alternative spaces in which to re-think attitudes to human mobility, otherness and identity. While promoting new forms of cultural and artistic activity, the projects have also produced social benefit, in enabling large numbers of people, especially young people in deprived communities, to think constructively about their own identity, memories and sense of belonging.
Graham White's research has had an impact on the preservation of cultural heritage, on processes of memorialisation and on formal innovation in broadcasting practice. His work on the performance of memory and the presentation of the self, explored particularly in public legal processes of historical reconstruction, fed into his creation of a series of original and adapted radio dramas during the census period. The reach and significance of this research, in particular focused on his 2010 adaptation of B.S. Johnson's formally innovative 1969 novel The Unfortunates for BBC Radio 3, but also in adaptations of Henry James' novel The Ambassadors for BBC Radio 4 and JG Ballard's novels The Drowned World and Concrete Island for the same network, is borne out by a range of evidence, from audience and beneficiary response to critical reception and a BBC award for innovation. The main beneficiaries of this research are the BBC, the B. S. Johnson estate, and radio audiences.
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.
Bill Niven is a public history practitioner, and an acknowledged expert on war and post-war Germany. The Buchenwald Child was a particularly well-known national story. It was based on wartime events but written up in the post 1945 period, where it was used by the socialist Deutsche Demokratische Republik (GDR) to demonstrate its antifascist roots and prove its sympathy towards Holocaust victims. Niven's study revealed that this much lauded story was largely founded on myth shaped by the exigencies of the Cold War (i.e. the need to prove that the GDR was the `better' Germany). His work started a major re-evaluation that stretched, as was always intended, beyond the boundaries of academia into the public domains of national identity formation within the context of reconciling the present with Germany's National Socialist and post 1945 divided pasts. This reassessment has taken the form of public discussion in the German media (newspapers, radio, TV), including a one-hour TV documentary film based largely on the book and including interviews with the Buchenwald Child himself, Niven and the director of Buchenwald Memorial Site. A paperback version of Niven's book was produced and distributed by Germany's Federal Centre for Political Education. It has since triggered discussion within organisations representing veteran survivors of the camp.
Research by Professor Kevin Fone in the Neuroscience group has established and characterised rodent models of CNS disorders that have been instrumental in validating several 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) receptors as therapeutic drug targets to treat learning and memory dysfunction in humans. Specifically, animal studies to validate the 5-HT6 receptor for cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease (AD), depression and schizophrenia have resulted in R&D investment in drug discovery programmes by several global pharmaceutical companies. Consequent advances in healthcare benefits (current and potential) are also summarised.