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Research at Edinburgh Napier University led to a range of activities enhancing the international literary reputation of Robert Louis Stevenson (RLS). Professor Linda Dryden has made a significant contribution to Stevenson's profile by promoting his reputation as a writer of serious and enduring literature for adults. This was achieved through public engagement and outreach activities that enhance the cultural lives of the audiences. The impact is measured through the creation of the RLS website, the establishment of RLS Day in Edinburgh, the acquisition of an RLS library, public lectures, numerous media appearances, a conference, and the Journal of Stevenson Studies (JSS) giving the impact both a local and an international profile.
James Hogg (1770-1835) is an important but hitherto little known nineteenth-century Scottish author and songwriter. In recent years, Stirling research has demonstrably expanded the audience for Hogg's songs and poetry in Scotland, the wider UK, and USA. Contemporary writers and artists have become more engaged with Hogg's work, and among the public this research has generated greater appreciation of the Scottish literary and music tradition in particular, while promoting Scottish cultural heritage in general, at home, and around the world.
Between January 2008 and July 2013 The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland resource [hereafter RPS] has been accessed over 1.99 million times by users from all over the world. Whilst the principal purpose behind the publication of RPS was to further the study of Scottish history, this level of access reflects widespread engagement with the resource from a broad spectrum of users outside the traditional university sector. In 2007, following an editorial and research programme which lasted over a decade, the Scottish Parliament Project at the University of St Andrews published a full edition of the proceedings of the parliament of Scotland between the 13th century and its union with the English parliament in 1707. This edition of parliamentary texts was published online as a free-to-access and fully searchable website. Its value in supporting informed public debate in Scotland during a period of rapid constitutional change has received the recognition of major political figures and has been noted in UK and Scottish print and broadcast media. The online edition and associated research behind its production has also contributed to the continued enhancement of the history curriculum within the Scottish secondary education sector and its use in the field of Scots Law.
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 case study focuses on the impact of research carried out at the University of Cambridge into the history of evolution by Professor James Secord and co-workers, notably the impact of two research programmes: the Darwin Correspondence Project and Darwin Online. These projects have contributed to a substantial reorientation of public discourse on the history of evolution. The impact has been achieved through web resources; museum and library exhibitions; teaching materials for schools and universities; and radio and television programmes. These outputs have encouraged public understanding of the range of contributors to science, including women; an awareness of the diversity of positions in the evolutionary debate; and an appreciation of the complex relations between evolutionary science and faith. The projects have shown that the highest achievements of scholarship can be made freely accessible to a global audience.
The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland project, completed in 2008, and its subsequent research developments have achieved considerable impact through widening global public awareness of this historical resource. Its free-to-access searchable database is accepted as the definitive point of reference for pre-Union Scottish legislation. The project's materials and findings have had sustained impact on archival, heritage, legal and policy practitioners, providing significant input to a wide spectrum of present-day political, social, economic, environmental and cultural initiatives, from public debate and consultation through to formal enactment. The project has also contributed to the enhancement of the history curriculum in Secondary education.
Professor Nicholas Cronk, has in collaboration with others, created an app which is an enhanced edition of Voltaire's Candide, freely available, for use on tablets. Candide is a timeless and universal text with perennial appeal, and this digital edition renders it accessible to a wide variety of new readers. Cronk has been encouraging engagement with Voltaire's texts through more traditional channels but this latest innovation has won new readers for Voltaire, especially among a young generation often more familiar with new media than with traditional books. The app, with its dual level of annotations, illustrations, manuscript images, commentaries, and the Polyadès recording, has been well received by a wide range of readers, and functions in a curatorial capacity to preserve an important work of French classical literary heritage in a new, sustainable format. The Candide app represents a revolutionary tool for both independent learning, and also for classroom teaching.
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.
Beyond Macbeth: Shakespeare Collections in Scotland, an AHRC-funded research project into Scottish receptions of Shakespeare, culminated in a major exhibition at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) in 2011. The project contributed to economic prosperity, education, and cultural life. It brought direct financial benefits to the NLS, in the form of £88k to mount the exhibition and media coverage with an advertising-value equivalent to £19k. The exhibition received over 26k visitors, a 30% increase on the previous winter exhibition. The project also shaped the way in which the NLS presents important elements of the cultural heritage in its custody, and influenced the development of its learning activities and online learning resources for UK schools. Visitors were led to examine their assumptions about Shakespeare, the history of his reception, and his significance for Scotland, and the exhibition was cited in the Scottish Parliament as an example of how the NLS meets its remit.
The Gutzkow project, co-directed by Lauster and Vonhoff of the Department of Modern Languages (German), has transformed public access to the author's work through open-access, on-line publication. The project, which combines specialist scholarship with innovative editing, has considerably enhanced public appreciation of a widened canon of 19th-century German literature (impact 1). User testimonies, the international press, public acknowledgement and public involvement in events in the region reveal a significant renewal of public interest in Gutzkow. The editorial results of the Gutzkow project have been requested by an interdisciplinary linguistic digitization project in Berlin and will be fully integrated in this open access linguistic database (impact 2).