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The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project was designed to have a range of public impacts since its inception and this case study focuses especially on the following three overlapping impacts: 1) It has enriched cultural life by recording, preserving and publishing free online the corpus of local place-names, and 2) has enhanced public understanding of aspects of language and history as preserved in these names. In particular, 3) it has impacted on civil society by creating space in which linguistic and cultural diversity can be encountered in an inclusive manner, and by illuminating the depth of connection between place and people across the range of historically diverse ethnic groups.
The Scots Words and Place-names Project (SWAP) engaged the public through an embedded use of the internet and social media, a strategy designed both to collect data on the Scots language and to raise the profile of Scots in the wider community. In order to make the project accessible to younger generations, a successful schools competition was run using Glow, the Scottish schools intranet operated by Education Scotland. SWAP also involved two partner organisations from the cultural sector, Scottish Language Dictionaries and the Scottish Place-Name Society, in order to provide a bridge between academic and cultural bodies and the general public.
Researchers at the University of Glasgow have created the first freely accessible online database of written and spoken texts in Scottish English and Scots. Together, the Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech (SCOTS) and the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW), both developed at Glasgow, provide over 10 million words of text from a range of sources, complemented by audio and video recordings and digitised manuscripts and documents. They have succeeded in raising interest in and awareness of Scottish English and Scots among the general public: 40% of SCOTS's resources were contributed by the public, and the website achieved 165,000 page views per month at launch. The database is also widely used by commercial lexicographers and professionals in secondary education. It is an `essential data source' for Scottish Language Dictionaries, `in day-to-day use' by the Oxford English Dictionary, and from 2006-2013 has been deployed by school examination boards across the UK (Highers, A-Levels, Cambridge International, and Oxford, Cambridge and RSA exams).
UCL research has created a groundbreaking names classification tool for use by healthcare organisations, local government and industry. This improved the effectiveness of public service delivery to different cultural, linguistic and ethnic groups, in applications such as A&E admissions and GP referral patterns. It was used by the leading provider of commercial geodemographic segmentation of neighbourhoods as a more differentiated source of ethnicity information than Census sources alone. The public was engaged with research through popular websites and extensive media coverage, and the research has provided interactive tools through which science museums have improved public understanding of genetics and family history.
Successive governments have emphasised the importance of Gaelic as a key element in Scottish culture, even though it is spoken by a small minority. Since 2001 the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies (C&SS) at the University of Edinburgh has played a leading role in research concerning policies to revitalise and sustain Gaelic in Scotland. These policies have fundamentally altered the role of Gaelic in Scottish public life. Our research has made vital contributions to the work of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the government body charged with promotion of the language, and other public bodies, especially in relation to education, from pre-school to adult learner provision, e.g. to date 1,500 pre-school pupils have benefitted from the recommendations in the early years report we produced in collaboration with the University of Stirling.
The collective research of Breitenbach, Delaney, Devine, MacKenzie, and Ugolini at the University of Edinburgh since 2006 has had impact in terms of public understanding, policy and museum practice in relation to the Scottish diaspora. Specifically it has: (i) enabled the transformation of public understanding of the emigration history of the Scots (a central part of the history of the nation) as global in territorial spread rather than simply confined to the settlement colonies and the USA; (ii) shaped the development of new Scottish Government policies of engagement with the global diaspora; and (iii) influenced the intellectual underpinning of new and revised national museum displays in Scotland especially in relation to empire and emigration.
Impacts: I) Enhanced public engagement with Scotland's cartographic heritage. II) Enhanced cross-sector collaboration around the use and digital delivery of historical maps.
Significance and reach: A major synthesis of Scotland's map history sold >8,000 copies between publication in 2011 and April 2013 and was named `Scottish Research Book of the Year' by the Saltire Society (2012). Three online map collections experienced 2008 — June 2013 access levels >50% higher than those for pre-2008. The newsletter of the Scottish Maps Forum (launched 2008), reached 553 individual subscribers and 117 institutional subscribers (January 2013).
Underpinned by: Research into the mapping of Scotland from the late sixteenth century, undertaken at the University of Edinburgh (1996 onwards).
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.
The journal and books disseminate our high quality research in an accessible form that deepens public understanding of Celtic Studies, shapes HE curricula worldwide, contributes to cultural life and informs public debate. The journal has been ranked as one of the two most internationally influential in the field of Celtic literature.
Cuairt Mhic'IlleMhìcheil is a BBC radio series tracing the life and works of the major folklore collector Alexander Carmichael, researched, scripted, and presented by Dr Stiùbhart, and recorded on location throughout the Gàidhealtachd. Restoring valuable, newly discovered cultural capital to marginalised communities, making crucial connections between the past and living Gaelic tradition, Cuairt proved a striking success with listeners and the BBC itself. The series enabled Dr Stiùbhart to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with Highland communities, enabling his research to support local cultural activities and to enhance public awareness of, and engagement with, a rich, complex, and endangered heritage.