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Hall's research has had demonstrable impact on policy, academic publishing and cultural life particularly through the development of Open Access (OA) publishing for exploiting, disseminating and commercialising academic research. The research reaches beyond academia to the international publishing industry and policy bodies through: publicly accessible, free-to-use, digital platforms/tools; and by establishing an OA publishing house, Open Humanities Press (OHP). Following his creation of one of the field's first e-journals, Culture Machine, Hall's research has significantly influenced methods, ideas and ethics within the publishing profession and public policy debate. Beneficiaries include academic authors, publishers, readers, research funders and research policy makers worldwide.
Research undertaken by Dr Peter Thompson at the University of Sheffield into the role of religion in society, and specifically focusing on atheism, Marxism, Ernst Bloch and the Frankfurt School, has led to new public interest in an atheist philosophy which goes beyond the "new atheist" paradigm. The work has attracted national media interest, and as a result of this, Thompson has become a regular contributor for The Guardian, with 34 columns in the `Comment is Free' section on religious and philosophical matters, all derived directly from his recent research into atheism, attracting 9-10,000 comments which have been read by at least 75,000 individuals. Indicative of Thompson's work are comments such as "Thank-you [...] for introducing an ordinary, non-academic person like myself, to interesting concepts like 'reification' [...]. I will have to read your whole series of articles now. Although philosophy appears, to someone like me, to be complex and remote, you have managed to explain the concepts of the Frankfurt School in such a lucid and engaging way that I will now have to read more on this subject." (13 May 2013). Developing his research on Bloch and religion has also led to Thompson co-editing a book with Slavoj Žižek, whose role as a public intellectual further strengthens the reach of Thompson's own research. Related to this work are further articles by Thompson in the Church Times, and a BBC Radio 3 documentary on atheist playwright Georg Büchner written and presented by Thompson (listening figure 100,000).