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Members of Exeter University's Centre for South West Writing (SWW) have collaborated with authors, scholars, musicians, archivists, museum staff, private businesses, public councils, and tourist organisations to enhance public understanding of the cultural heritage of the South West of England and its distinctive literary traditions. Much of their research is archival and has reached audiences via publications, conferences, concerts, festivals, lectures, blogs, exhibitions, and the commissioning of public monuments. The main impacts of their research have been to:
The Rylands Cairo Genizah Project has had impact through its conservation, presentation, and interpretation of an internationally important archive of manuscripts which illuminate all aspects of the history, and the religious, social, and commercial life of the Jews in the Levant from the 9th to the 19th centuries. This collection is of deep interest to the Jewish community in the UK and abroad, and forms part of the cultural capital of this country, where the vast bulk of it is now housed. The project has also had an impact on heritage experts, by developing methods which have been applied to recording and disseminating other cultural assets.
The Oxford World's Classics (OWC), re-founded in 1980 as a paperback series and now also available electronically, includes many new translations from European languages with introduction and notes written for a non-expert reader by scholars drawing on their academic research. Three members of the Oxford Modern Languages Faculty (Cronk, Kahn, Robertson) have been particularly active in translating and/or editing volumes and in advising the Series Commissioning Editor on the basis of their respective research expertise. The impact is partly economic (sales, including export sales), partly cultural in making key works of European literature accessible to an Anglophone public reliant on translations and partly educational as the editions are adopted worldwide on secondary school, undergraduate and graduate reading lists. The OWC editions have made classic European literature available to an international market, reaching out to new audiences.
The Knights Templar are famous for their involvement in the Medieval crusades but the myths surrounding them and popular representations, as seen in The Da Vinci Code, have created an inaccurate view of the Templars' historical significance. Nicholson's research on (a) the Templars and their estates, (b) her collaborations with museum and heritage organizations, and (c) her advice on Templar properties, has challenged misconceptions about the Templars and informed professional practice in presenting heritage sites, benefiting individuals, authors, archaeologists and museum practitioners. Her research has equipped non-academic audiences with a clearer understanding of the Templars, generating new interpretations and cultural artefacts by diverse groups worldwide.
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.
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).
The Guide to Receptors and Channels has contributed to the development and maintenance of the intellectual infrastructure of pharmacology. The key tools it provides have influenced appropriate identification of lead drug targets and how best to study them and, as a result, it has received endorsement and financial support from the Pharmaceutical Industry. It is used widely as a teaching aid for undergraduates and research postgraduates and provides the general public with accurate information on prescription drug action. It led to the formation of the Guide to Pharmacology website in collaboration with the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology.
This case study demonstrates how the research of Dr Michael Sanders on Chartist poetry has enhanced the public awareness of nineteenth-century working-class politics. Dr Sanders regularly communicates his research beyond academic audiences to reach a general public through his involvement in public lectures and musical, film, and heritage projects all aimed at expanding the understanding of poetry from the Chartist era. His work has had a direct impact on the presentation and preservation of the rare National Chartist Hymn Book, which was digitised as a result of his advisory role and made available to a whole new audience.
Challenging the popular perception of Pentecostalism as a `made-in-the-USA' religion and advocating the global beginnings, multiple origins and local initiatives of the phenomenon, Anderson's research has had profound effects on the self-understanding and practices of Pentecostal Christian churches across the globe. He has inspired a world-wide audience through his outputs that are used within Pentecostal communities and have resulted in invitations to give public lectures and addresses to large, global church audiences.
His writings and lectures have also influenced the philosophy behind curriculum design and course content in seminaries where lay and ordained ministers are trained, particularly in India, the Philippines, South Korea, Ghana and Ecuador. The Anderson agenda for alternative, `post-colonial' Pentecostal identities has helped develop a new vision for the movement and its regional missionary expressions.
The impact activities described in this document are dedicated to altering cultural perception of the creation, production, and performance of modern literature through re-presentation of the work of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett in a variety of informed contexts. Beckett research at Reading is underpinned by the university's exceptional archival resources, which include manuscripts of his writings alongside rare editions, letters, production notes for his dramas, and intriguing ephemera. Our impact-generating activities around the archive are focused upon the deployment of those resources in ways which enhance understanding of the processes behind the creation of literary works and dramatic performances. This approach to impact has involved researchers in the Department of English in the curation of exhibitions relating to the archive; in giving talks at sites crucial to Beckett's literary development; and also in the digitization of materials relating to Beckett's major works. Out of this has come testimony from a variety of people and organisations to the change that has come about in their attitude and response to a variety of creative phenomena.