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The activities of Nottingham Trent's Centre for Travel Writing Studies influence learned societies' projects, museum exhibitions and universities' study of travel writing and culture. Our public engagements principally take the form of museum events, library talks and presentations, and media appearances.
Our pioneering research centre creates new understandings of travel writing, within and beyond academia, and produces a fresh appreciation of the centrality of travel to British history and culture. In partnership with institutions such as Coventry Transport Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the Joseph Banks Trust, the Hakluyt Society, and Nottingham's Bromley House Library, we organise exhibitions, arrange public events, and, through the publication of important historical travel accounts preserve, conserve and present cultural heritage.
Our collaborations impact on how museums and libraries view and present their collections and on societies' publications. Our research influences university syllabi. We provide specialist knowledge to media researchers, and other inquirers. Through broadcast interviews, podcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, introductions, textbooks, companions and encyclopaedias our work affects audiences' understanding of the written representation of travel.
Dr. Zoë Kinsley's research focuses on British home tour travel writing by women and a significant part of her work in that field has involved the study of manuscript travel journals held in libraries and county record offices, the majority of which had received little or no critical attention prior to her own research work. She has undertaken a series of public engagement activities within Greater Manchester and Yorkshire, focused on the manuscript writings of Dorothy Richardson and other women travelling in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which encourage greater use of and interest in local archive services, enrich understanding of local history in the North of England, and assist in the preservation of regional literary heritage. These events, all of which took the form of workshops which encouraged discussion and debate between participants, have taken place in partnership with Wigan Archives Service, Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre, and the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
The Military Writing Network (MWN) was founded in 2009 by Siobhan Campbell, Principal Lecturer in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Kingston University London. Drawing on research by Professor Rachel Cusk, Dr. Meg Jensen and Professor Vesna Goldsworthy into the interface between testimony, trauma literature, autobiographical fiction and recovery from trauma and related disorders, the MWN created and sustains partnerships with organisations working with veteran soldiers, sailors and airmen and their families toward investigating how creative writing practice can help them cope with issues relating to combat stress, both inside and outside mental health environments.
The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) actively promotes cross-sector collaboration and exchange with cultural institutions outside Higher Education. Through these partnerships, MEMS research in material culture and spatial studies by Catherine Richardson and Bernhard Klein has delivered public benefits by changing curatorial practices in the heritage sector and by influencing the content and the form of the education of doctoral students in the Humanities beyond the University of Kent. This research has been used by cultural providers, engaged wide public audiences, significantly enriched the experience of a large number of individuals, and changed the policies of several institutions within and outside the UK.