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Academic work carried out at the University of Southampton's Parkes Institute has greatly raised public awareness and understanding of the Holocaust. The research has challenged audiences to reflect on the individual consequences of discrimination and urges them to recognise and respond to the continuing contemporary dangers of genocide. Through various projects, the research has impacted upon international audiences: with a website averaging 24,000 hits per month; with museum exhibitions, for close to three million visitors; and with research-based study-days for school and adult learners. Throughout, the work emphasises the devastation wrought by the Holocaust on `ordinary' people, and reflects upon the `ordinariness' of genocide in the twentieth century.
Speaking in 2012, David Cameron declared proudly that the Great War is `a fundamental part of our national consciousness'. But what is acknowledged far less is the role of minority groups in the conflict. Jews, national minorities and colonial troops all fought and died at the front. Tim Grady has helped to push this knowledge to the centre of the public's understanding. His talks, magazine articles, podcasts and consultancy work have raised awareness of the diverse range of voices involved in the First World War, highlighting the impact of other combatants, as well as the involvement of the Jewish community.
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.
Through his research on Nazi Germany and on the causes of the Holocaust Professor Peter Longerich has made a substantial contribution to CULTURE and to PUBLIC DISCOURSE internationally. He addresses globally important and controversial questions, including the relationship between anti-Semitism and the commission of mass murder, and the degree of responsibility born by Germany as a nation for the Holocaust. His work has been debated in high profile media forums, such as Der Spiegel and Die Zeit.
Longerich's research has also led to impacts on both CIVIL SOCIETY and POLICY MAKING in Germany, for example through his appointment as the chair of the Independent Expert Committee on Anti-Semitism, an advisory group established by the German government, and on EDUCATION: in 2011 he was commissioned to help design a public `document centre' focused on the history of National Socialism in Munich.
This case study examines the impact of Alan Marcus's work as documentary film director, practice-based researcher and organiser of a series of events known as The Director's Cut, in which he interviews internationally renowned filmmakers, script writers, composers, actors and animators to bring out, for a public audience, the paradigms, creative influences and innovations that shape their work. The public impact of his films can be assessed by the many institutions which have held screenings of them, together with invited talks by Marcus, and the impact of The Director's Cut interviews by the scale of their immediate audience (regularly over 200 and sometimes as many as 900, in the case of Sir David Attenborough), and the amount of media coverage and internet activity they generate. This impact is enhanced by workshops and masterclasses that allow aspiring filmmakers to work with some of the major film practitioners in modern cinema and television, and by Junior Director's Cut events which encourage film-making among local schoolchildren.
Professor Gilbert Achcar's book The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives has produced considerable impact outside of academia, greatly informing public understanding and debate around the Arab-Israeli conflict, particularly concerning Holocaust denial in the Arab world and the charge that Israel uses the tragedy to its own advantage yet ignores the on-going displacement of Palestinians. The impact of his work is evidenced by substantial book sales, numerous reviews and interviews in the popular press, online debate in the Jewish press and blog postings, and invitations to Achcar to discuss his work on TV and radio, and to advise on documentaries and films exploring this issue.
UCL research improved public understanding in Portugal of the important role that Lisbon played in WWII as an `open city' where both sides in the war operated. In particular, it showed and publicised the city's role as an exit point for thousands of refugees (mainly Jewish) trying to escape German-occupied Europe and get to North America or Palestine. This was achieved through a best-selling publication and a photographic exhibition in Lisbon attended by 10-14,000 visitors. Both were widely reviewed as providing important insights supported by research into previously unpublished archives.
Professor Raphael's research into the theological meaning of women's experience during the Holocaust, the Jewishness of Jewish Art and idol-breaking as a key tool in the criticism of contemporary culture has had religious, cultural, political and educational impact outside the Higher Education academy. Her work has helped three constituencies to make theological or spiritual sense of the Holocaust, to understand the political connections between gender and genocide and to appreciate the theological relationship of modern Jewish art to the tradition. These constituencies are:
i. the general public;
ii. Jews and Christians on ordination training courses where religious art and modern Jewish thought are studied;
iii. Sixth-form pupils studying the problem of evil.
This case study focuses on Holocaust education in schools in Scotland. The research has shaped future United Nations programmes, influencing teaching pedagogy in Scotland and in the international community. Findings have contributed to the recognition of the positive value of school based Holocaust education as evidenced in Scotland by local authorities' provision of Continued Professional Development courses in teaching the Holocaust to teachers, and increasing numbers of schools commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. Further, the research has contributed to the political debate on the value of school visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust Memorial and Museum, and educational debates on the contribution of Holocaust to Citizenship education.
The research has had an impact on public understanding of the contested German past. Pathways include public lectures, radio broadcasts, newspaper coverage, and the production of two documentary films as well as A Level source materials and school textbook chapters. The reach has included diverse audiences in Europe, the USA, Australasia and elsewhere. It has improved the knowledge and understanding of students and teachers in the UK, professionals involved in public history activities in Germany and interested members of the public. In the Rhineland, it has led to changes in how the legacies of former officials are commemorated. The research has been of particular personal significance to people variously grappling with the continuing legacies of Nazism and the Holocaust, and the East German dictatorship.